Tshwane City Manager condemns DA’s unlawful and illegal antics

Pretoria – Sunday, 28 October 2018: The City Manager of Tshwane – Dr. Moeketsi Mosola condemns the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) dirty and unlawful tricks it has resorted to in tarnishing his good name and reputation. This follows the successful interdict by the City Manager against the Executive Mayor Solly Msimanga, the Speaker of Council and City of Tshwane with a ruling by Judge Andre Van Niekerk last Thursday at the Johannesburg Labour Court barring the tabling of the investigative Bowman-Gilfillan Preliminary report in Council. 

It is shocking and disturbing that the DA, a governing party in the City of Tshwane that claims to respect the rule of law has chosen to leak a Council Report to the media – a serious transgression against the court interdict. The report was leaked to the Sunday Times and the City Press newspapers. To date, Dr. Mosola as a subject of the Bowman-Gilfillan Preliminary report has not received or seen it – only the DA Government and the Office of the Executive Mayor received it. The little that Dr. Mosola has seen of the report are notes from inquiries by both newspapers in what they claimed to be findings of the report thus rendering it bogus.

Dr. Mosola says, “the least I expected from Solly Msimanga, the Executive Mayor and DA government in Tshwane was to respect the law instead of blatantly defying the court instructions and acting illegally and unlawfully leaking a bogus report in the dead of night. These antics are similar to that of apartheid StratCom. The people of Tshwane and South Africa must know that the DA Government in Tshwane acted unconstitutionally by defying the court order and therefore they cannot lay a claim to clean governance. Clean governance means respecting the rule of law even if it does not favour you”.

This leaking of a Council Report by the DA is not only totally inappropriate and undignified behavior only aimed at tarnishing Dr. Mosola’s good name and reputation in an attempt to get rid of him – it is illegal and unlawful and it must be condemned by all South Africans who believe in the rule of law and constitutionalism.

Concludes Dr. Mosola, “As the City Manager, I was appointed by the Tshwane Council and although my recourse now rests in the law, I await to hear what all other political parties in Council have to say about the illegal leaking of its report by the DA and the public persecution of the City Manager”.

Statement issued on behalf of Dr Moeketsi Mosola by Decode Public Relations, 28 October 2018