DA’s Peetz loses membership over travel claims
Sharon Peetz, the former mayoral committee member for economic development in the City of Johannesburg who took her mother to Spain and tried to get the metro to foot the bill, is no longer a DA member.
Peetz lost her job on mayor Herman Mashaba’s executive team in August, but retained her position as a councillor.
The latest development has thrown her place in the council into question.
DA federal executive chairman James Selfe revealed that Peetz’s membership had been terminated in an answering affidavit filed in the High Court in Port Elizabeth, wherein the DA is opposing the United Democratic Movement’s application to have Mongameli Bobani reinstated as deputy mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay.
Selfe said in the affidavit that the DA applied the same zerotolerance approach towards its own members who were implicated in corruption and maladministration as it did to Bobani in the metro. He cited Peetz’s case and said she had been axed after it was found that she had arranged for her mother to accompany her on an official trip to Spain and tried to get the City of Johannesburg to pay for the airfare and accommodation.
“Peetz’s membership of the DA has subsequently been terminated. In our view, a ‘zerotolerance approach’ to corruption involves assiduously investigating substantiated allegations of corruption and acting promptly against persons who are implicated in such allegations,” Selfe said.
Peetz and Selfe could not be reached for comment. It is not clear when her membership was terminated.
Mashaba said in August that Peetz had been removed as a committee member in agreement with the DA’s federal executive. Earlier in 2017, Peetz was first cleared after allegations were made to the effect that she had acted irregularly in arranging to take a relative on an official trip to Spain. A forensic investigation determined that the city did not pay.
But Mashaba said in an August 2 statement that “recent evidence has been brought to our attention that the proof of payment, between Peetz and the travel agent, which the councillor had provided to my office as proof that she had paid the travel agent, was allegedly falsified”.
Khume Ramulifho, chairman of the DA’s Johannesburg region, said he was waiting for formal communication on the matter.
He said that, procedurally speaking, a PR councillor, which is Peetz’s position, would lose his or her position in council if party membership was terminated. The position would then be filled from the party list.