Councillors to appear in court for ‘harassment’

FIVE DA councillors in Gauteng are to appear in the Germiston Magistrate’s Court today for allegedly harassing one of their fellow female councillors, Thina Bambeni.

She was removed from her party’s candidates list for seeking a court interdict against them.

The withdrawal of Bambeni has apparently sparked outrage within DA circles as party insiders have also disclosed that their national leadership had failed to take action against senior parliamentarian Dianne Kohler Barnard in March last year.

Kohler Barnard remains high on the DA’s national list despite the allegations of hate speech lodged with the Equality Court against her by the DA’s operations director, Louw Nel.

Nel lodged a complaint with his party, alleging that she made racist remarks during his party meeting on the N2 highway in KwaZulu-Natal last year. Nel took the matter to the Equality Court after his party failed to act.

Nel has been suspended. He was not available for comment yesterday.

Kohler Barnard was also not available to respond to allegations against her.

Yesterday the DA confirmed the withdrawal of Bambeni’s candidature but said it was due to her serial unfounded allegations of sexual harassment against senior DA councillors in the Ekurhuleni metro council.

DA Gauteng leader John Moodey said that he wrote an email to DA federal chairperson James Selfe asking him to remove Bambeni from their list of candidates for the upcoming elections.

“Given her past history of accusing members of her caucus of sexual harassment… her actions relating to serving protection orders on her caucus leadership at a council sitting, being escorted by police officers…

“I therefore petition the FCEC (federal candidates’ election committee) to red-flag this applicant,” Moodey confirmed.

Moodey said Bambeni accused DA caucus leader Shadow Shabangu of sexual harassment in July last year but failed to furnish the disciplinary committee with proof.

Bambeni was not available for comment and did not respond to messages.

Meanwhile DA would-be parliamentary candidate Siphesihle Dube has turned to the Western Cape High Court to challenge the party’s decision to remove him from its MPs list.