Durban - Outspoken Ekurhuleni mayor Mzwandile Masina has demanded to know the terms and conditions of the R1 billion donation made by billionaire Patrice Motsepe's foundation and associated companies.
On Saturday, just a day after the foundation made the donation that will mainly go towards buying sanitisers, personal protective equipment and water tankers, Masina took to Twitter to voice his opinion on the matter.
“Another R1 billion donation from our very own national sbari (brother in law) Let’s hear what are the conditionality’s linked to this gesture,” Masina tweeted.
He further argued that once the money is donated to the government it becomes public money and it should be subjected to scrutiny.
“Once they donate it becomes public money we need to ask more critical questions, unfortunately. We need more people with backbone to do this. It’s not a nice job, unfortunately… we are here to ask these critical questions, it’s now our R3 billion we need to account for it” he argued.
However, Masina’s stance has pitted him against AfriForum. The lobby group’s head of policy and action, Ernst Roets said all donations come with conditions because those donating money should know how their money is used.
“We are in a national crisis currently and we also believe that if someone is prepared to donate such a massive amount of money, certainly they should be able to have input in terms of how that money is spent. If people do not have input how their money is spent the consequence will simply be that people will not donate money," he said.
Roets criticised Masina and said his tweet was disgraceful.
“So there is nothing wrong with donating money on the condition that it will be spent in a particular way. We believe the tweet by the mayor is disgraceful especially due to the fact that we are in the midst of a national crisis and we should be welcoming people who donated money instead of attacking them after they have donated their money.”