Cape Town Council trapped siphoning Covid funds for DA party purposes

20 May 2021

The GOOD Party welcomes the arrest of a City of Cape Town councillor allegedly involved in a scheme to launder Covid humanitarian funds through a Table View church for DA party purposes.

When the GOOD Party raised the alarm on 30 April about a money laundering scheme involving the use of humanitarian funds for DA party purposes, in an open letter to Mayor Dan Plato, the City immediately took to social media to tweet a series of categorical denials.

The denials were lies.

Today, three weeks later, a DA councillor handed herself over to police investigating the alleged money laundering scheme.

GOOD took the unusual step of addressing its inquiries about the fraud to Plato in an open letter after receiving information that a senior DA member in Atlantis had already been arrested.

The public route was followed because the Cape Town Council has taken to refusing to answer questions related to governance posed by GOOD in the provincial legislature.

The reasons GOOD addressed its questions directly to the Mayor were (i) That as executive mayor he has oversight responsibilities over council expenditure, (ii) Because he also holds the position of Regional Chairperson of the Democratic Alliance, and (iii) because the church that unlawfully received the humanitarian funds happens to be where he launched his campaign to run as the DA’s candidate for Mayor in October’s election.

“It is unclear whether these funds were to be used as part of an internal DA campaign or for DA party purposes,” GOOD wrote to the mayor. “Given that these are public funds meant to mitigate citizens’ social and humanitarian distress, there are duties of transparency and good governance on your administration.”

No reply was received from the mayor, while the city issued its false blanket denial.

GOOD calls on the DA-led provincial government to reign in the looters in its party ranks and take urgent steps to stop the further misappropriation of public funds.

If its cadres deployed to the city don’t want to account to citizens for funds allocated for humanitarian relief and/or any special Mayor’s fund ostensibly for Covid-19 and social relief, the Premier must step up to the plate.

Residents should know what role DA councillors played in identifying recipients of humanitarian funding and how much money is presently under investigation. They should know how much money has been abused for party purposes in similar circumstances. And they should know what steps the DA and/or City is taking to prevent further abuse and hold implicated people to account.

Issued by Brett Herron, Secretary General, GOOD, 20 May 2021