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A DA councillor has resorted to opening a criminal case against the mayor of Matatiele Local Municipality after the council failed to investigate its boss.
Wongekile Potwana, DA chief whip of the small town’s municipality, laid charges of fraud against mayor Sonwabile Mngenela in July.
The case relates to the ANC conference in East London in May last year. Mngenela is accused of defrauding the municipality by requesting to be booked for a number of days in East London in April 2022 to attend an event to which he was allegedly invited in his capacity as mayor. This was while he was allegedly going there as a branch delegate of the ANC.
He was allegedly invited to the East London event by an organisation called the National Association of People Living with HIV/Aids (Napwa).
The event corresponded with the same dates that the ANC conference was supposed to be held in April. It was later postponed to May – and so were Mngenela’s invitation and bookings in East London for the said event.
When the ANC finally held its conference in May, Mngenela’s booking, a councillor and a driver were again reserved to correspond with that event.
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City Press can reveal that an invitation from Napwa coordinator Nontsikelelo Gcwabe dated April 14 2022, addressed to Mngenela and the corporate services head, also wanted the mayor to attend an event in East London (for which the exact venue was not stated) from 9am to 5pm from May 5 to 8.
Gcwabe can be heard in a voice clip saying that the mayor had been invited to East London in his capacity as an old member of Napwa. However, she added that the meeting had not sat due to a disaster in KwaZulu-Natal.
“He then attended a conference of the ANC in East London and we asked him to meet with us, as we were in a meeting of the Aids council [also in East London]. Although he promised to meet up with us, he didn’t come,” she said.
Potwana said he was forced to approach the courts after the ANC-run council used its majority to sweep the matter under the carpet.
Approached for comment, Mngenela promised to respond in “due course”, but failed to do so.
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According to a letter dated July 28 last year, Potwana – who was then also the deputy provincial chairperson of the DA – asked for the matter to be investigated, but his request fell on deaf ears.
He also mentioned in the letter that R13 914 of municipal money had been used to book the mayor and another councillor in East London while they attended an ANC provincial conference.
However, Matatiele spokesperson Lawrence Walaza, told City Press on Friday that the mayor had committed no wrong. Mngenela, he said, had subjected himself to all investigations regarding the matter and had nothing to hide.
Walaza described the allegation as “nothing but cheap political point-scoring by the DA”.
