ANC councillor to lose job after appeal bid fails
Convicted fraudster Bongo Nombiba will on Monday be removed from his position as councillor after his application for leave to appeal was denied by the Supreme Court of Appeal on Friday.
This will create another vacancy in the Nelson Mandela Bay council.
A vacancy exists after former DA councillor Dean Biddulph resigned.
A by-election is set for March 6 to fill the vacancy.
The ANC was expected to meet Ward 20 residents on Monday to share the news and start preparing for a by-election, Eastern Cape secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi said.
Ngcukayitobi said this ahead of the ANC youth league’s celebration of the life and times of Peter Mokaba in Kwazakhele on Sunday.
“We had given [Nombiba] the opportunity to appeal and the appeals process has now been concluded. We will remove him as a councillor of the ANC,” Ngcukayitobi said.
“Tomorrow, we are meeting with the community to inform them officially, and then prepare for a by-election.”
Nombiba was arrested in December 2016 and convicted in April 2018 of fraud and money laundering after the court found he had duped an NGO’s members into handing over R20,000 of a R30,000 donation he had helped secure.
Nombiba started serving his five-year sentence at St Albans in April, but was granted bail later pending his application to appeal against both his conviction and sentence. When his appeal bid failed in the Commercial Crimes Court, he turned to the Eastern Cape High Court in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), where his appeal was also denied.
Attempts to reach Nombiba on Sunday were unsuccessful.
At the lecture, Ngcukayitobi addressed ANC supporters on the importance of studying.
He said comparisons made between the EFF leadership who had graduated and the ANC’s leadership had been a “killer punch” to them.
Nelson Mandela Bay ANC Youth League secretary Luyolo Nqakula said they were celebrating the life of Mokaba, who had exemplified what it meant to be a youth leader.
Mokaba, who died in 2002, was an MP and ANC Youth League president.