Executive Mayor, Gary van Niekerk says that the DA’s Retief Odendaal, resorted to conniving ways to adversely affect Nelson Mandela Bay service delivery.
This after Odendaal spoke at length about van Niekerks coalition government’s failing in van Niekerks first 100 days as Mayor.
Van Niekerk has written to Odendaal’s boss – John Steenhuisen – in an effort to get him to call Odendaal into his office for a spanking.
In the letter entitled The Truth, addressed to Democratic Alliance leader, John Steenhuisen, Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Executive Mayor Gary van Niekerk laid bare his reasons why Councillor Retief Odendaal should be held accountable for the adversity faced by the municipality.
Dated, 28 August 2023, Mayor Van Niekerk, lists how Councillor Odendaal played a key role in the sequence of events leading up to the withholding of grant funding by the National Treasury.
“The leader of the opposition played a key role in the circumstances leading up to him writing to National Treasury, without tabling any of these issues in Council, resulting in funds being withheld,” said Mayor Van Niekerk at an impromptu session in Jenny’s Room, Gqeberha City Hall on Wednesday.
See what Odendaal said in the video below:
The letter to Steenhuisen from Executive Mayor Gary van Niekerk is below:
NELSON MANDELA BAY MUNICPALITY – THE TRUTH
I believe that the narrative provided from a senior member of your party, Councillor Retief Odendaal, with regards to the happenings at our municipality, is detrimental to the state of democracy within our beautiful nation called South Africa and which has led to the current state of political instability within the metro.
The DA forms an essential part of the council of the metro, but the unethical manner in which Mr. Odendaal carries himself, has led to collapse of the last coalition.
Let me explain with the facts as follows:
1. CONSTITUENCY SERVICES
a) From the very beginning Mr. Odendaal approached various coalition partners with the narrative that he is honest and reliable and would do things in the interest of the coalition as a whole. His exact words….”this is not a DA coalition…”. We accepted this.
b) From day one Mr. Odendaal showed how untrustworthy he is. Upon taking office he announced that a “new” MMC position of Constituency Services would be created and that he as the Mayor would play 2 roles, that of Mayor and also overseeing the Budget and Treasury Department.
c) NB. The announcement was made without any consultation with the coalition partners.
d) To avoid any serious conflict we accepted this position on condition that this was only a temporary arrangement.
e) NB. The coalition partners were never given the option to consider the position of MMC Constituency Services before the announcement.
2. CITY MANAGER – DR NQWAZI
a) When the coalition with the DA took over government from the ANC there were 2 conditions from the “smaller” parties linked to it.
b) The first condition was that the City Manager must be removed. The SIU report confirms that the CM is guilty of fraud.
c) The ED of EDTA Mr. Qaba who was found to be innocent by the municipal disciplinary board must be reinstated in his ED position.
d) After the change of government it was interesting to see that Mr. Odendaal did everything in his power to keep the CM in her position.
e) The CM was arrested by the Hawks for fraud on the 29th September 2022 at City Hall.
f) At the time Mr. Odendaal was the Executive Mayor and it was his statutory obligation to bring these fraud charges to Council’s attention within 7days. This was never done.
g) The municipality under Mr Odendaal instead challenged the SIU report in the High Court. This application was dismissed with costs. This is clearly fruitless and wasteful expenditure. The smaller parties were not aware of this application until we received the judgement.
h) It is also evident from various coalition meetings that Mrs Helen Zille requested all documents pertaining to the CM so as to provide a way to remove the CM legally. I am not sure if this was ever done although the coalition unanimously agreed to this.
i) After her arrest the bail conditions prevented the CM from working at the metro.
j) On the 3rd January 2023 a high court application was brought by the CM to amend her bail conditions. The coalition partners spoke with Mr. Odendaal to make sure the municipality defended this matter. On the 2nd January 2023 Mr. Odendaal confirmed that he was not aware of the case being set down for the 3rd January 2023 but confirmed that he would make sure the matter was defended.
k) Upon attending court the next day we found that the NMBM did not have a legal representative but that Mr. Odendaal had rather sent a DA Councillor, Mr. Morne Steyn to establish the “reason” for the application. This was considered totally unacceptable by all coalition partners.
l) This wasn’t the first or last time that Mr. Odendaal pulled the wool over our eyes for his personal reasons.
m) We later found out that he had knowledge of the court application on the 30th December 2022.
n) The court – without the matter being defended then allowed the bail conditions of the CM to be relaxed which allowed her to come back to work.
o) If he had any proper intention, he would have appealed against this court order.
3. SECTION 12 APPLICATION
a) Upon the Section 12 being promulgated by the MEC COGTA against the NMBM, the coalition partners had an urgent meeting and resolved that the Municipality as an entity should oppose this.
b) Mr. Odendaal then took the unilateral decision to bring this application to challenge the Section 12 in his personal capacity as the first applicant and the DA as the second application.
c) The coalition partners were very perturbed by this decision and we were then requested to provide supporting affidavits even though we were cited as formal respondents on the application.
4. MBDA SAGA
a) In November 2022 Councill changed the MBDA directors to x 5.
b) In November 2022 Retief chaired the MBDA Representatives Meeting (Municipal Oversight Committee) and appointed Mrs Glenda Perumal as Chairperson of the MBDA Board.
c) Mr Qaba the ED of EDTA at the time, was cleared before the 12 December 2022 by DB board of NMBM.
d) In December a report from PWC found that the DB board had erred and that Mr Qaba was guilty. This report was requested from by the CM and not from council.
e) This report was not tabled in council. Apparently this item was on the council agenda for end Jan 2023.
f) Instead at the postponed council meeting, Mr Odendaal withdrew the item and replaced it with a flyer which was the golden handshake item for Qaba.
g) The smaller political parties of the coalition requested that Mr Qaba come back into his position as ED to avoid further litigation and costs.
h) The CM and Mr Odendaal didn’t want this and that’s how Mr Qaba’s golden handshake was agreed to.
i) Mr Qaba then applied for the position of CEO at MBDA. Nothing in the settlement agreement prohibited this. Mr Qaba’s application was common knowledge amongst all political parties including the DA. He was the best candidate at the time (according to the MBDA board). Tthe panel that shortlisted the candidates included Mr Jamda from HR as well as an Internal Audit Committee representative from the metro.
j) When the MBDA board reached shortlisting stage the Mayor (Mr Odendaal) sent a letter to the CEO of MBDA to stop the appointment process, without reason. (March 2023)
k) After the current Mayor took office the MBDA chair approached him to assist in continuing with the process. NB, the current Mayor was not privy to any correspondence between Mr Odendaal and MBDA at the time. No handover by Mr Odendaal was ever done.
l) The MBDA board chairperson then requested the CM to send a representative to be part of the interview panel to continue with the shortlisting and appointment process. The CM did not allocate anyone.
m) MBDA then sort a legal opinion and continued with the shortlisting and appointment process.
n) After Mr Qaba was appointed the metro received a letter from national treasury (mid June) to question the validity of the appointment of the CEO of MBDA.
o) This in itself is highly irregular as national treasury never gets involved in these municipal entities unless there is direct prejudice to the municipality. Political interference was suspected and Mr Odendaal admitted to sending a letter to national treasury in this regards.
p) I am not sure why he didn’t bring his concerns to me or the Chairperson of the MBDA Representatives Committee or even to Council first. There are clearly a number of options open to any councillor in this regards.
q) The metro responded to national treasury in respect of all its concerns. The MBDA representative Committee chaired by the DM confirmed that there was no issue in respect of the legality of the CEO’s appointment. (see attached correspondence)
r) National treasury has to date not responded. Again a sign of politic interference.
s) The Deputy Mayor and I with the CM and CFO flew up to the Minister of Finance to discuss a solution with national treasury.
t) The Minister then wrote a letter to the metro to confirm that no grants will be paid unless certain action is taken in respect of the CM and MBDA.
u) As a direct result of Mr Odendaal, firstly being instrumental in the golden handshake of Mr Qaba and secondly then writing to treasury about the appointment of Mr Qaba as CEO, without bringing his concerns to council, the grant funding the metro so desperately needs was withheld.
Besides the above 3 matters – there are many other instances where the coalition members and I felt betrayed by the DA and Mr Odendaal.
I personally addressed my concerns at the Coalition Oversight Committee with zero effect.
This is what led to the breakdown of trust between me (as Speaker at the time) and Mr. Odendaal and the DA.
I trust that this letter, addressed only to yourself, as the Leader of the DA will highlight the serious nature of these matters and I trust that you will investigate and take the appropriate action.
The other 8 political parties, who were part of the coalition at the time, can corroborate my statements above.
I am available for a meeting to discuss this matter further if needs be.
Editor: Even if Odendaal was grossly negligent it STILL remains behoven upon the current Mayor (van Niekerk) to FIX what Treasury has told him to fix. And, whilst we are on about responsibilities, the MBDA also needs to remember that the Municipality FUNDS the MBDA and if they do not play NICE then that funding could very well be withdrawn. So, we would recommend all role players to step back in line and remember just where they stand in the pecking order.
Related Thread: AQaffair
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