Summer holidays for past six years at taxpayers’ expense
EASTERN Cape taxpayers have been paying for summer holidays for the family of ANC chief whip Mzoleli Mrara’s “love child” for the past six years.
The most recent was last summer’s four-day holiday in Cape Town for Mrara, his 10-year-old love child and her mother, who are not being named to protect the child.
Saturday Dispatch today can reveal that Mrara instructed his office to book them – the 10-year-old and her mother – for four nights between December 10 and 14 last year at the four-star Southern Sun Waterfront Hotel in Cape Town.
The holiday was paid for using ANC constituency funds after Mrara rejected an earlier booking for his “family” at the Southern Sun De Waal in Cape Town’s city centre.
The Dispatch has seen copies of vouchers for the two hotels.
A chief whip is responsible for ensuring rules of the legislature are followed by members of his party.
Records from the legislature, leaked to the Dispatch, reveal that Mrara – the ruling party’s most senior member of the legislature who also serves as the accounting officer of both the caucus and constituency funds – gave instructions that the ANC’s constituency funds be used to book a family room at the Southern Sun hotel for “Mr M Mrara and family (wife and child)”.
His wife did not make the trip. Instead, the mother of his child and the child flew from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town and checked in at the hotel together with Mrara.
A source, who has worked at the legislature for more than 10 years, said this booking was not the first one as secretaries had been making holiday bookings since 2009. The trips were paid for by the taxpayer, through the constituency funds allocated to the ANC.
The mother of Mrara’s child this month started working in Mrara’s