Port Elizabeth - The DA’s mayoral candidate for the Karoo town of Oudtshoorn, which has been crippled by political instability, maladministration and financial crisis over the past three years, says his party is committed to cleaning up, despite fielding a candidate whom a forensic report recommended should face criminal investigation.
Current Eden District Municipality mayor and proportional representation list candidate for Oudtshoorn in the coming elections, Wessie van der Westhuizen, was found to have committed travel claim fraud, forgery and breaching the Municipal Finance Management Act by ENS Forensics in 2013.
But DA mayoral candidate for Oudsthoorn, Colan Sylvester, says Van der Westhuizen was cleared by an internal inquiry.
“Wessie was reported to the MEC (for local government, Anton Bredell), but then he was found not guilty – by a process relating to the procedure the speaker followed in instituting the investigation,” Sylvester says.
He insists this should not lead voters to question the party’s commitment to cleaning up Oudtshoorn, as the matter had at least been referred to the party structures, unlike, he says, what happened in the town under the ANC.
“What we do is, when there’s an issue, we report it to council, the speaker, and if necessary we will report it to the party structures as well,” Sylvester says.
“Then we go through a disciplinary process, and he went through that – instead of what we saw with some of the other parties in town, where there were issues reported to their structures and never followed up.”
Political Bureau