This article may contain graphic and/or adult content unsuitable for minors and sensitive readers.
The National Prosecuting Authority is in the process of studying a docket containing affidavits to the effect that members of the DA and a Plettenberg Bay township group sparked public violence to unseat the ANC in the Bitou municipality in 2007.
NPA spokesman Eric Ntabazalila said: “We have received the docket from the police after we returned it to them so that they further investigate some issues we wanted them to look at. We are busy studying the docket and we will make a decision as we are done with that.”
Ntabazalila confirmed complaints of sedition were laid with police by Plettenberg Bay attorney Hardy Mills. Mills represents Plettenberg Bay civil rights organisation The Justice and Equality Front (JEF), which comprises a group of 10 Garden Route lawyers who seek to monitor corruption in local municipalities.
The JEF alleges that in 2007 a group comprising DA members, and a political grouping known as Quina Mhlali Qina (QMQ) were behind the unrest that included the destruction of cars and assets and the burning of ANC members’ houses in May of that year.
QMQ comprised influential township members who were seeking good governance in the Bitou municipality, and worked closely with members of the Kwanokuthule community in particular.
The claims are based on the testimonies of two former QMQ members, who told Director of Public Prosecutions-appointed investigator Warrant Officer Vernon Jantjies in December 2011 that QMQ leader and current Bitou mayor Memory Booysen and then DA councillor Johann Brummer took care of the logistics and were fundamental in the planning of the operation to stir unrest.
The docket was finally given to the DPP a two weeks ago – shortly after Jantjies revealed that he had been instructed to “suddenly” hand over the docket to the Plettenberg Bay police station more than a year ago.
Jantjies said he had found additional evidence and was on the verge of completing his investigations when he was told to submit “everything I had”.
Earlier, a frustrated Zamile Xipula, 44, of Kwanokathule outside Plettenberg Bay, one of the QMQ members, confirmed that he had given statements to DPP investigating officer.
“I did give those statements and I thought I would be given protection but now it seems the case has just gone away because of political reasons. I am a blind man but when I walk in the streets I hear people insulting me,” Xipula said.
“My family does not even want me to go outside. All I want is for this case to come to court. But I am no longer afraid anymore. The truth must come out.”
The JEF claims that as early as June 2006 Brummer sent an email to the effect that the ANC members in council would be remain “unless the people in the township can convince the ANC by means of civil unrest to remove them”.
Mills, who acted at the time for various Bitou municipality functionaries and is a founding member of the JEF, submitted that his clients had been subjected to a concerted and orchestrated campaign aimed at discrediting them and making Bitou ungovernable.
But Brummer vehemently denies that he ever advocated civil disobedience or violence. “In fact, I spent many hours calming the inevitable hot heads who wanted to take that route,” he said.
Acknowledging the existence of the email, he said it had to be seen in context.
“I wrote: ‘It does not look like the commercial crimes unit is, after more than a year, anywhere near the point of dealing with [former municipal manager] George Seitisho and [former mayor] Euan Wildeman.
“ ‘My feeling is that they are still going to be with us for a long time unless the people in the township can convince the ANC, by means of civil unrest, to remove them. They have told me that they are going to make this town ungovernable if these people are not removed either by the police or the ANC. Scary prospect’.”
Brummer said his words actually proved prophetic, as weeks after the 2006 election a report stemming from an investigation by the Special Investigations Unit “showed that every word I had said and more was true”.
He said there were calls on the ground for Seitisho and Wildeman to be arrested for fraud and corruption, yet this never occurred. It was this, he said, that led to an escalation in violence in 2007.
Brummer conceded that the QMQ had been an ideal “target market” for the DA after Booysen had won a by-election in 2007 to “to weaken the ANC at the polls”.
He said although meetings were held between the DA provincial leadership and the QMQ, it was decided that the latter would throw its weight behind Cope in the 2009 elections, which the DA ultimately won.
Yet Mills maintains that the 2007 violence had been orchestrated by the alliance between the DA and QMQ.
He claims that despite complaints of intimidation and violence being laid with the local SAPS, the investigations were never followed through or “with the degree of seriousness they warranted”.
