We keep you updated by sharing Plettenberg Mayor’s latest letter to the public and then point out which facts he’s gotten wrong (bold and in italics – discussed at bottom of page).
Letter #4 from Memory Booysen
Bitou Council’s first 100 days came up on Wednesday 14 September and it is timely that we stop and take stock of what we have achieved in these 100 days. Well, considering it took us 32 days to wrest control from the ANC, make that 68 days.
We have unfortunately not achieved all that we set out to achieve. In retrospect, our plans were perhaps a bit over ambitious and we had certainly not bargained on what needs to be fixed before we can really move forward.
But out of adversity have come some generous acts of community spirit.
Disciplinary Hearing for Municipal Manager:
The disciplinary hearing for Lonwabo Ngoqo, who has been on suspension since July is scheduled for 28-30 September in Plett. It has been a long drawn out process even involving an aborted High Court application against his suspension. One bit of good news, however, is that retired Supreme Court of Appeals Judge Pete Combrinck has volunteered his services to chair the disciplinary hearing. Judge Combrinck has an impeccable and distinguished record on the bench and his decision will certainly be above reproach. We are incredibly fortunate to have a judge of his standing volunteering his services for the good of Plett.
Administrative Co-operation:
Obtaining the cooperation of Bitou’s administration has been one of our toughest challenges these first few months. I know that many of our residents are anxious to see people being called to account for maladministration. There are, however, a number of investigations running simultaneously and the necessary procedures must be followed in bringing charges against those who prove to have been involved in irregularities. Good progress has been made and several officials will be charged shortly. We ask your patience as we have to follow strict adherence to labour law which is slow and expensive.
The good news there is that as things progress, people are coming forward and revealing past iniquities making it far easier to hone in on those who have committed abuses and to obtain the necessary evidence to build cases against them.
Organizational Design:
The organizational design project I mentioned in my last newsletter is on the point of commencing and we are sure it will totally revitalize our administration. It will allow us to put the square pegs in the square holes and the round pegs in the round holes and to get rid of the dead wood that is sapping our service delivery strength. It will allow us to shift focus from being a bloated organization providing highly paid employment to the well-connected, to being a lean clean machine delivering top-class services to the people of Plett. We will be able to concentrate on being where the rubber hits the road. (Yes, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the company of MBAs!)
It is taking time but in the end it will be worth the effort and the wait.
We are not going to be satisfied with second best. It is our long term aim to become the first municipality which is fully King 3 compliant. We can and will do it.
Money down the drain:
One of the most troubling facts to emerge so far out of Bitou was a contract with Lefatshe Technologies. Lefatshe had, in 2008, obtained the licence to sell a municipal finance IT system developed by the Belgian state-owned agency Cipal. A decision by Cooperative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka, that all municipalities be encouraged to use the system, placed Lefatshe in a position to make immense profits.
The programme was piloted in Westonaria in Gauteng where our ex-municipal manager, George Seitisho became Municipal Manager after leaving Plett. The process has been surrounded with controversy, allegations of kickbacks, non-performance (by the vendor) and improper tendering.
Unsurprisingly, Bitou has paid for implementation of exactly the same programme. By the end of June 2011, the municipality had paid Lefatshe a total of at least R10m, a rate of R139,000 per month since April 2007. But Bitou Municipality does not in fact use the Cipal system; it does not work. The town has paid millions for something it has never used and will never be able to use. Needless to say we have cancelled their contract. The Hawks are currently investigating Lefatshe nationally and will soon be placing the Bitou contract under close scrutiny.
This has placed our municipality in great jeopardy, but once again Plett has proved to be blessed with caring ratepayers. Ex Plett Councillor and now MEC for Education, Donald Grant mentioned our predicament to Plett property owner, Jeremy Ord, who is Executive Chairman of Dimension Data, the largest IT solutions company in SA. He immediately offered to send a team down to Plett, at no cost, to evaluate our technology systems and needs and suggest a plan going forward. He has gone even further than that and will be coming to Plett personally this week to get things rolling. We appreciate his generous support tremendously.
Library Services:
A big concern this past year has been the previous council’s threat to close our central library. I am pleased to report that MEC Ivan Meyer, Provincial Minister for Cultural Affairs and Sport, is allocating R2.2m per annum for three years to Plett, and one of the areas this council will allocate the money will be to the central library. Its location is convenient for all and it is imperative that it stays in Plett central.
This additional funding will take the pressure off the municipality’s finances with regard to subsidizing libraries, which is actually a Provincial and not a municipal function.
Open and transparent communications:
One of my top priorities for the first 100 days was to make all municipal information open to our ratepayers and residents. To this end I have held monthly report-back meetings in our communities and sent out bi-weekly e-mail letters, but we still have a long way to go. Our goal is to put tender results, council meeting agendas and minutes, and much more information on our website.
Our website is not nearly adequate despite many hundreds of thousands being paid over the past few years to companies associated with Lefatshe to maintain it.
Ward Committees:
Despite Bitou being one of the very few municipalities in SA with a properly administered ward committee system, the system itself did not work as it should have. The main reason for this was that the committees themselves were made up almost entirely of party hacks and were used as a system to reward loyal supporters.
Ward committees are designed to form communication bridges between councillors and the broader public, to question and inform council and to advise council as to the direction it should be following. For obvious reasons that did not happen.
The Corporate Services Department, in the persons of Carl Mattheus and Alma Greyling-Jones, has put in a massive effort to redesign the entire system which they presented to councillors in a workshop. Unfortunately only the DA Ward 1 and Ward 2 councillors attended the workshop, but we are confident that all the ward councillors will come around to realizing the important role their ward committees play in the democratic governance of our town.
Council will adopt the exciting new system at its meeting on 27 September and then it will be rolled out through a series of workshops in each community within each ward. My special thanks to Carl and Alma for bringing us so far down the road.
The Economy and Job Creation:
To put it mildly, our economy is not doing well. It is an absolute priority for us as municipality to create an enabling environment for business to flourish and to create the many jobs we so urgently need. Dupre Lombard, a town planner from Stellenbosch, recently spent some time with us to resolve many town planning issues which were long overdue, and prepared a report on how to streamline future applications. Generally we continue identifying and removing red tape wherever we can and have had some heartening successes which will start bearing fruit in the near future.
Where we are still struggling after 100 days…
Legal Expenses:
For the four-year period from 2007 – 2010, the Bitou ANC council spent R10,3m on legal expenses….much of it is now being scrutinized to establish if the MFMA was transgressed.
Despite having done as much as we could to withdraw, settle etc in order to extricate ourselves from as much of it as we could, we now find ourselves embroiled as defendant in a number of new High Court cases. Ironically these are being brought against us by some of the municipality’s own councilors and officials.
It appears that this onslaught is being orchestrated by the lawyer who formerly drove the municipality’s many court cases. At first he tried to get the municipality to fund the litigation on their behalf, which would have doubled our costs and given rise to a situation where the municipality would be litigating against itself and would be paying the costs of both the winner and the loser.
Having failed at that, he and the ANC have now formed a fund, the Justice and Equality Fund, to raise funds to bring what he has referred to as a “hail of litigation” against the municipality. No matter how ill-conceived and frivolous these matters may be, they still cause a distraction and divert scarce resources preventing the municipality from focusing on real service delivery.
In the meantime we face a barrage of paper and rude and threatening correspondence.
Debtmageddon:
Our financial situation is not improving. We have reduced our expenditures by R13m for the financial year by cutting all superfluous expenses such as the recording studio that Bitou was funding, overseas travel, useless consultants, etc, but we were still barely able to pay our ESKOM bill and salaries this month and must cut deeper. But, as Duppie says, “we are unscrambling the scrambled egg.”
We are pursuing a R30m loan from Standard Bank to refinance some of the capital expenditure that should have been financed from borrowings, but which were financed from revenue and reserves. We will not be taking up the total amount but will only have a facility available. This will be very closely monitored by ourselves and our bankers. We are walking a tight rope but know we cannot borrow ourselves out of trouble.
Airport:
Last, but by no means least, we had hoped to be able to have commercial service restored by the season. This now appears to have been over ambitious. We have to be very careful that we take the right decision for Plett (and Knysna) as yet another aborted attempt to fix the airport debacle would probably mean the end of all hope to ever have a proper functioning airport again.
Scorecard:
So, in our first 100 days we not only have plans but in a number of instances are some way down the road of executing these plans.
We will redouble our efforts to get our finances under control, improve our town planning department to make it easier to invest in Plett, and start to recover some of the fruitless and wasteful expenditures on behalf of our ratepayers.
I want to thank everyone again for your generosity of spirit, prayers and support. A special word of thanks to those officials who are now realizing that it is no longer a threat to their jobs to defy the conspiracy of silence and fear which has permeated our organization for so long and who are concentrating on service delivery and are now willing to expose the wrongs that have done so much harm in the past.
One day soon it will ALL be good news.
Memory Booysen
Mayor of Plettenberg Bay
OUR RESPONSE
Mayor Memory Booysen’s letter is littered with inaccuracies that reflect political defence rather than the truth of the situation. Herewith follows our contrary response to particular statements so that you are better informed of the real situation:
“…took us 32 days to wrest control from the ANC, make that 68 days.”
The fact of the matter is that all the postponements of the council meeting were directly caused by the incompetence of the Speaker accompanied with an arrogant and partisan behaviour. Incompetence is one thing, but if you are incompetent and arrogant it becomes dangerous. We await the court’s judgement on who’s to blame for this and who really were at fault.
“…an aborted High Court application against his [Lonwabo Ngoqo] suspension.”
Blatant misinformation as the court case on behalf of Municipal manager will be enrolled for argument as soon as the municipality complies with the rules of court and file their opposing papers in the court file. Due to their intentional and blatant disregard of the rules the matter could not be argued on the 12th of September 2011. An appropriate punitive cost order will be pursued against them. Attached is the lawyer’s letter sent to J Gillespie – 14 Sept 2011.
“We ask your patience as we have to follow strict adherence to labour law which is slow and expensive.”
Extremely ironical considering that the reason for much of the dispute is the failure by the DA-led Plett municipality to follow labour law. They have unlawfully terminated the livelihoods of many which we will prove in court. The Bitou municipality have been requested numerous times to comply with legislation which is applicable to them. In various matters such legislation has been spelled out to them. It has now been established that they are not remotely interested in complying with the law and carry on with one blunder after the other, costing the tax payer dearly.
The whole “Legal Expenses” section and the out of context usage of “hail of litigation”
A major obstacle to amicable resolution was the Bitou Council not responding to our requests and correspondences. In the exact same letter from which Booysen quotes “hail of litigation”, he fails to mention these lines:
“We wish to emphasise that litigation is not in the best interest for both sides and that the town in general suffers as a result thereof, and should thus please be prevented at all costs, especially in these types of clear cut, uncomplicated matters. I have been able to convince my clients in all the matters I currently act against Bitou Municipality to avoid litigation as far as possible, and only litigate in the cases thus far where there was no other way.”
In all the matters we repeatedly begged the municipality to simply comply with the law. These requests unfortunately proved to be fruitless. One example of this is the letter to Memory Booysen – 14 September 2011.
Keep up the good work by exposing the DA for who they realy are. They are using the devide and rule princle. Your youth must be bolt and radical!
Wow nothing is what it seams!!! When will the truth prevail??? How long do we have to have such a negetaive speaker? who will be able to help us?
I feel its important that we stand for what is right for our country. The ANC isn’t perfect, but they didn’t have a destructive spirit in Plett. The town is dying and the province is digging for ghosts instead of delivering on the promises they’ve made to their constituents….instead it seems the DA already decided to tender apologies for why they are not delivering….
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.
The speaker of Bitou Council is an embarrasment to the DA, our town and country. He’s a pathological liar and a hypocrite. How does he explain the presence of his GF in his office…she’s not even an SA citizen, for all we know we could be dealing with an american spy here…how did he employ her? The mayor must explain the presence of his relative and party goons who stabbed Kenny Leluma infront of a Kwano police station…
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.
Dirty political half-truths used to influence an ill informed public. These tactics have been used by the DA and the pre 1994 Government for many years. They use the media (which is under their control) to spread these lies as is very clearly exposed in this article. Hopefully this site will help to inform more people of what is actually going on.
It is strange how people simply ignore any rules that stand in the way of what they are trying achieve. Politics are dirty, but please stop playing the man and play the ball. Incompetent politicians just waste money and divide the people of SA further.
Finally we can have a voice. The PLett media has silenced the activist voice.
All we now know is that the DA is a bunch of incestous liars of the greatest order. Their own disgruntled comrades is now beginning to expose them. The ANC should work with these guys so that we expose the strategies and plans of the enemy. ” We are not blind concerning his devices”. The DA has perfected the art of “political tokenism” and we are not surprised. Look at Dan Plato, Memory Booysen and last but not least Patricia de Lille. We should ask should past a law like The Black Political Empowerment Act 2011 whereby we should define “political fronting” and put a ban on it and call it a political crime.
Viva for JEF
The only corruption was 21 springbokkies which was drunk at a restuarant while we know Brummer is eating for free at the Lookout Deck because they have already promise him extention of his lease. Brummer has now also employed his ugly girlfriend at the municipality and nobody tells me whether this is legal or not. I know he eats for free at the DECK because I work there.
Who is corrupt now?
By the way why is Marthinus Du Plessis not investigated for his racist comments on e-mail at Stellenbosch Municipality. Has Zille swept this under the carpet as well?
The ANC must get its act together in the Southern Cape. There are lots of illegal decisions that the DA led Councils are making for instance at Eden District Municipality they have paid the disgraced Godfrey Louw who happens to be the municipal manager an amount of R150 000.00 as a performance bonus to which he is not entitled to. Louw was evaluated during 2009 and the evaluation panel found that he must not get a bonus. He appealed to the MEC Bredell who appointed a mediator and the mediator found that he is not entitled to a performance bonus. At the time Louw was suspended and subsequently he was reinstated after referring his dismissal to the abargaining council. The bargaining council found that he was guilty of incurring fruitless and wasteful expenditure to the tune of R360 000.00 he faught the legal battles of the DA with public funds. DA led Eden Council had written the fruitless and wasteful expenditure off although the municipal requires that the Council must recover it from the person who incurred the expenditure.
Louw was reinstated with back-pay for 10 months, but he failed to declare to Council that he earned a salary of R 75 000.00 per month from the George Municipality when he acted in the position of Director Corporate Services for a period of 4 months. He received close to R1 million rand as back-pay and and should have declared the close to R400 000.00 he received from George Municipality which should have been deducted from the R1 million he received from Eden.
In the past two months he appointed forensic auditing firms without following the proper supply chain processes to the tune of R1.4million. Two very senior officials were supposed to be transferred to George Municipality because those officials worked exclusively in on behalf of Eden in Uniondale and Haarlem areas. The Uniondale and Haarlem area was recently incorporated with George Municipality. These official earns collectively R1 million per annum. Is this not fruitless and wasteful expenditure?
Wessie vd Westuizenthe Mayor of Eden appointed four people in his office which cost the tax payer close to R1.2 million per annum and most of these officials are friends or neighbours of the mayor. The DA is accusing the ANC of cadre deployment, but they are the masters of cadre depoyment. You can go and have a look at each and every municipality where they are in control.
I don’t want to speak of the corruption with the Rheenendal Disaster Fund at this stage, but will report on it in due course.
Very insightful Terrence! It is very concerning to see that a person who was found guilty of fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounting to R 360 000,00 is also paid a bonus of R 150 000,00 (over and above the double income he received ie from Eden – back pay – and George). This fruitless and wasteful expenditure does not even include the costs occasioned by his initial disciplinary hearing (where he was found guilty) and the subsequent wasted costs of the arbitration (where the guilty finding were upheld).
Don’t u worry the Public Protector is coming for Mr G! After the PP got him the SIU and jail awaits him!
JZ’s legal processes might take some time but they coming for sure!
DA= corruption (corrput officials) and cronyism.
Johan Stander the person who was involded in DA tender fraud to the amount of millions of Rands at Eden DM, is back at Eden Dm to cover up all the DA’s wrong doings. Is zille’s and De lille hands really so clean as there media campain indicates?
I heard Johan Stander is responsible for the budget at EDM. O jirre hulle moet die geld wegsteek!
He erans R 41K per month.
This should be a clear sign to thos blacks who voted for the DA, it’s only the white DA cronies who get the top jobs.
Can someone please sponser memory with an Edgars gift voucher…aish
Lets please not get personal, lets rather stick to the point of finding out why we dont all act civilly and get on with the job in improving our town and the circumstances for all and not look for spooks
Ditto. All should aim for the facts. Truth is an honourable objective.
Memory wake-up they are using you. You are not really in charge, you are just Theuns Botha and Brummer’s boy’tjie. Look at how theuns are treating his farm workers, do you really think he cares about you? Tell the people that it was Theuns and Bummer who made you give the BMW back.
They told us they gave it back, is that the truth or a lie can anybody help, the rumour is IT IS A LIE
I heard that it is true. Photos have been taken. JEF will probably inform the public soon.
You mean it is true that it was returned, or it is true that it is a lie?
The BMW was NOT given back – the proof has now been published o this site. Obviously this was just another BIG lie from the DA run Municipality. Why lie about something as silly as this, or is it just a matter of proving their own inherent dishonesty? A complete inability to be truthful? Trying to gain public approval and confidence with lies. Eish, how low can they sink? All this while they are pointing fingers at others and accusing them of such behaviour…
Wessie vd Westhuizen, the mayor of Eden has appointed a former teacher as his PR Manager. This PR Manager was expelled from his position as ateacher for inpregnating a learner at the school where he was teaching.Hoe moet die kind se ma nou voel nadat die DA burgemeester van Eden hierdie sex offender bevordering gegee het met ‘n slaris van R350 000.00 PER JAAR. Nou ja toe!
Very nice of the DA to organise outside “assistance”… Hmmm.. Wonder whats going happen to the tender process? Supporting local business?? Doesnt sound that way so far.. lets see what happens..
Some of our black people believed once they vote for Devil Alliance things will be better, more jobs and no corruption are they working now?? i don’t think so they were used by DA as their voting machines and now they are still struggling to make ends meet. I wonder how long is it going to take them to see that the Devil Alliance used them! DA uses our people for their gain sies they are even using the so called mayor Memory Booysen he is just a mayor by name but the real mayor is Brummer! Wake up guys these guys are here to devide us why cant you see that? I am so happy that the lies are ending now thanks to Mills
I saw Memory enhancement pills in the pharmacy today. Maybe I should sent this to all DA voters to realise they made a big mistake to vote for memory and brummer!
Good to see some humour on this forum:)
Here is some more food for thought. Mr. Booysen mentions that for 4 years the municipalities legal costs were R10.3 million – we have to assume that will include all legal costs, including the transfer of properties, litigation, collection of debts etc. R10.3 million in 4 years works out roughly to about R214 583,00 per month. Strangely enough they managed to WASTE legal costs of (lets be conservative) R1 million, in their first 2 months. And that on only ONE case (not including collections, property transfers etc) – at this rate they will end up wasting R24 000 000,00 in the same amount of time – and yet we are to see what the costs will be for the disciplinary hearing of Mr. Ngcoco.
Bra Memo, forgive me for refering to you in this way, this is how I name u behind closed cuttings or wen i talk about u to any one, I hope you dont mind.
Ok, you see when I read these statements in ur last letter and other letters u have writen I could not help but laugh and, I have to confess, for a moment it did cross my mind that the Mayor might have been smoking or drinking the strong stuff before he made these utterances. Then I felt sad and a bit sorry for the gentleman who styles himself as a man of nobility.
I have no way of knowing what are your motivations might be for writing these letters. Maybe you are a sincere person with strong if somewhat bizare views. Or maybe you have been listening too many of Brummers version of how he sees black leaders or rather ANC leaders, I speak under corrections.
While I find your lies deeply obnoxious, I do not think the best way to deal with you (Memo) is to ban you from writing these letters. If this is the kind of thing you have to do to show the Zille’s and the Brummer’s compassion towards fighting ur black brothers and sisters, I hope that by allowing u to write all these letters, this will eventually help Brummer and yourselves to deal with your suspiciously obsessive attitudes towards ANC councillors.
Besides, as I have written before, and I am almost certain that you are seemingly deeply damaged and very angry at were you stand at the moment. But how should relatively reasonable, logical and respectful people deal with these kind of utterances even if they want to side with you? I happen to be unknown to most people of Bitou because I live in upper middle class white village, living in the suburbs and am usually able to avoid weirdo’s who make statements like those uttered by you, unlike some other black men fear is that will they ever going to receive government houses, find jobs etc. Poeple who face the most vile and sometimes lethal members of communities because of your lies is Abantu from Ekasi your Kasi that apparently u have left because u felt life endangered.
Well, my belief is that banning these kinds of words will not stop our black people from deprivation. Neither will it help the hatred between our fellow black brothers and sisters . People will still think about all you said and they will still say this and that one have done so and so. Some people will also act on their fears and hatred by attacking others to make themlseves feel better about their internalised self-hatred created by your lies.
The only thing that I think will stop this kind of exploitative hatred is a change of heart on your part, unfortunately some of you have been brainwashed by Brummer to believe that other ANC members supposedly created in the image of God are inherently bad or even evil. In other words we need to change the way you think.
The only way to change you is if those of us who are more reasonable, more compassionate, more respectful of human difference, convince you that these hateful views of DA about ANC are illogical, irrational and immoral. When those of us who are empowered to talk sense so stand up for ourselves and for the ANC and if we demonstrate through our words and our deeds that people like Mr Brummer is at best a deeply damaged soul and at worst, just a populist charlatan, we will begin to win this fight I tink, dont you agree Mr Memo.
Personally, I am going to write to Mr Brummer and tell him the good news that it is ok to be black and that if he has any problems with his race I will be very happy to talk to him about this. After all, it is only human to help another person to overcome his or her self-hatred.
Its unfortunate that I dont have enough time, I just have to end this convesation here.
Until we talk again, have a luvly term of office, lol.
It is time that we all realise that there is but one RACE, the human RACE. What is happening in our area is the other race, namely disgRACE.
Memory sweet Memory where are you? Are you still the Mayor of Bitou? We are looking forward to your next newsletter!
Whats going on? Have we lost momentum?