Cape Town - Ousted Western Cape provincial legislature speaker Masizole Mnqasela says he will not give up on his quest to be reinstated as a member of the DA and that despite the Western Cape High Court dismissing the urgency of his application, he will be back in court again in 2023.
Mnqasela was speaking following Judge Matthew Frances’s dismissal, with costs, of his application against the DA and other respondents, including the new speaker and Premier Alan Winde.
Mnqasela, who is facing allegations of fraud relating to abuse of travel and entertainment allowances, had gone to court last week to challenge the DA’s termination of his membership, which led to him losing his membership of the legislature.
Addressing a small group of his supporters outside the court after the decision, Mnqasela said his case against the DA was “a continuing matter” and that the merits would be debated inside the courtroom.
“The court is very sober. It said let us not deal with this thing on an urgent basis. We need time for this thing and that is what the judge said.”
He said his case was contained in his affidavit and that he stood by everything in it.
Mnqasela approached the court on the basis that the DA’s termination of his membership was unlawful.
“But what is more important here is that I want my DA membership card back. I want to wear a T-shirt like yours because my blood is blue. In fact, my blood has been royal blue since day one,” Mnqasela said.
Mnqasela wanted the court to, among other things, issue an order permitting him to file portions of the record of the disciplinary hearing under seal, on the basis that only the court and the party’s legal representatives be permitted to have access to relevant portions of the record.
His lawyers said this would allow him to demonstrate the reasonableness of his public statements. They said this went to the heart of the artificiality of the DA’s “re-admission process”.
Mnqasela argued that he could not defend himself against “the false allegations of fraud and corruption levelled against him in the public domain.”
Meanwhile, the DA has moved ahead to replace Mnqasela in the legislature with a former deputy mayor and speaker of George Municipality, Gerrit Pretorius.
Pretorius was sworn in at a ceremony presided over by recently elected legislature speaker Daylin Mitchell and witnessed by DA MPL Matlhodi Maseko at the same time as Mnqasela’s case was being argued in court.
DA deputy chief whip Deidré Baartman said the party welcomed Pretorius and that the DA was back at full complement in the legislature.
Baartman said the new MPL brought with him a wealth of knowledge from both the private and public sectors and had worked in the South African foreign service and later at the Mitsubishi Corporation before returning to his hometown of George, where he worked in the private sector for 16 years.