City really has nothing to gloat about after failing people

“WE, the people, have spoken. Be fair and give credit where credit is due.” That is the lamentation of Lorencia October of Lotus River in defence of Mayor de Lille’s mostly male Mayco (“People have spoken” – Cape Times, 12 August).

Let us analyse what has occurred under the watch of the glorified Mayor so far.

This is the same Mayor who protected her own councillor, Irma Jackson, after 40 pensioners from Mitchells Plain and Strandfontein paid her R120 000 for a trip to Durban that never materialised. Only long after the matter became public and criminal charges were laid by a private individual, did the City reluctantly act against Jackson.

It also took a High Court judge to point out to bumbling City officials that they had given permission for a cellphone tower to be erected at a wrong location in Constantia following legal action against the City by the DA’s own members.

Then, four years ago, Mayor De Lille’s City paid more than R11 million for Operation Ceasefire to an unknown NGO in gang-infested Hanover Park. Rather bizarrely, the City has yet to provide a single, audited financial report on what exactly our ratepayers’ money was used for.

Then, on 5 February this year, the Cape Times led a front-page scoop, “Councillor’s dubious past”, following the Mayor’s appointment of Christopher Jordaan as chair of subcouncil 4 (Goodwood, Elsies River and Parow). DA councillor Jordaan was previously dismissed as an employee of the City for selling two of its vehicles, a Ford Laser and a Mazda Marathon, for financial gain.

The City’s prosecutor, M Stander, stated at his disciplinary hearing that Jordaan had been “unco-operative, unreliable and it is quire clear that he cannot be trusted”. As subcouncil chair, Jordaan now earns an annual salary of R800 000 courtesy of our ratepayers.

This is the same Mayor who, according to the Cape Times of 12 August, is “still in the process of investigating the possibility of electrifying certain areas”, despite residents of six informal settlements in Mfuleni waiting more than 11 years for a basic constitutional right.

And then DA councillor Willie Jaftha, in a moment of sheer lunacy and under the watch of De Lille, begged a High Court judge for a more lenient sentence for a dangerous gangster facing several charges, including murder and rape.

This same DA administration also blindly handed more than R400 million in tenders to Filcon, despite its owner, Saul Loggenberg, being banned from operating in the UK by the British Insolvency Service. Filcon was already facing eight different liquidation applications in the High Court when they received our public money from the City and province (Cape Times, 5 May, 2014).

And although the DA always claims to champion the cause of victims of crime, their own councillor, Barbara Rass, declined to testify in aggravation of sentence at the High Court trial of the Atlantis Fancy Boys. Despite this and due to the exemplary work of generals Jeremy Vearey, Peter Jacobs and the Operation Combat team, the entire gang was sent to prison.

Lorencia October’s blind loyalty should be measured against these facts, where it is fairly clear that credit isn’t automatically due – it must be earned. In the words of Andy Grove: “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure.” The City of Cape Town has failed its people and there really is nothing to gloat about. Colin Arendse Wynberg