Did Peace Mabe commit fraud in Mogale City?

31 August 2016

On 18 August 2016, Peace Mabe was sworn in as a councillor in Mogale City, and was subsequently nominated by the ANC as their mayoral candidate. As we all know, she was defeated by the successful nomination of DA councillor, Lynn Pannall, who is now the Mayor of Mogale City. However, it has now emerged that Peace Mabe never resigned as an MP before being sworn in as a councillor and thus may have committed a clear act of fraud by accepting her nomination and voting in the Mogale City council vote that day.

Section 47(b) of the Constitution is clear about the qualifications of Members of Parliament:

“Every citizen who is qualified to vote for the National Assembly is eligible to be a member of the Assembly, except – permanent delegates to the National Council of Provinces or members of a provincial legislature or a Municipal Council.”

Similarly, section 158(d) of the Constitution makes it clear that “every citizen who is qualified to vote for a Municipal Council is eligible to be a member of that Council, except – a member of the National Assembly…”

When Peace Mabe stood for election and was sworn in as a councillor in Mogale City last week she was simultaneously still a Member of the National Assembly (NA) as she had not resigned. Despite the fraud through Mabe’s failure to resign, once she was sworn in as a councillor she no longer qualified to be a member of the NA and thus her membership ceased by default.

However, once it was clear that she was unsuccessful in her bid to become the Mayor, Peace Mabe then simply jumped on a plane and took up her seat again in the NA, and does not appear to have been sworn in again as an MP in terms of section 29b of the NA rules.

Such actions cannot be accepted.

I will thus be writing to the Speaker to request that Peace Mabe be denied entry onto the floor of the NA and be prevented from participating in committee meetings as a member of the NA until her membership to the NA has been duly processed and she has once again been sworn in as a member. I will also refer Peace Mabe to the Ethics Committee for her apparent violation of due process in this regard.

Issued by John Steenhuisen, Chief Whip of the DA, 31 August 2016