Fraud claims fly as Pappas hits the KZN campaign trail

Christopher Pappas appears to be neither shocked nor surprised by the allegations of financial impropriety that have been flying since he was named as the Democratic Alliance (DA) KwaZulu-Natal premier candidate on Monday.

Pappas, 32, is the mayor of the uMngeni local municipality, the first council won outright by the party, a role in which he has excelled and which has helped pave the way for his bid for the premiership.

The announcement of his nomination appears to have touched a nerve.

Pappas’ former colleague, Sizwe Mchunu, now an ANC member of the provincial legislature, has written to the public protector asking for an investigation into the allocation of R100 000 to uMngeni Tourism, a nonprofit run by Pappas’ former fiancé, JP Prinsloo.

Social media has also been buzzing with allegations of corruption in the purchase of a R7.1  million landfill compactor by uMngeni municipality, which Pappas has run since November 2021, and awards the council made to other nonprofit organisations under his tenure.

In an interview conducted in the foyer of public broadcaster SABC’s Durban studios on the heels of an hour live on Ukhozi FM, Pappas said he had expected the flurry of allegations to come once he was nominated, but not as quickly as they had.

“I expected a smear campaign. I thought that they would have been more creative, or at least have taken a bit longer to get there,” he said. “I will have to rise above it, I guess.”

Pappas said Prinsloo, who had left uMngeni Tourism several months ago, had been elected as its chairperson by the time Pappas became mayor, and that the R100  000 grant had been made following council procedures.

Pappas said he had declared his engagement to Prinsloo — formerly a DA councillor for the Bluff in eThekwini metro — to the council in writing in April 2022, before the grant to uMngeni Tourism, which also received funds from the provincial government, was processed.

“When JP and I ended our engagement — sadly, life and circumstances does that — I wrote back to the council,” he said.

Pappas said the uMngeni Tourism grant had previously been raised by the ANC — now the opposition in uMngeni municipality for the first time — in the council and been investigated by local media.

He believes that in addition to political considerations, the pushback then — like now — was a result of resistance to a different way of doing things in government, one that was focused on delivery rather than on sustaining power for the sake of patronage.

“When you go a little bit unusual and push the boundaries about how you do this, the establishment pushes back. You take their power away … power that lies in control over resources,” Pappas said.

The DA has calculated that the candidacy of Pappas, along with a pre-election coalition agreement with the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), gives the opposition in KwaZulu-Natal a real chance of taking control of the province from the ANC.

Although it is a mathematically difficult proposition, the DA and the IFP believe that their combined votes will be enough to take the ANC below 50% from the 54.2% of the vote it received in the province in 2019.

While the DA’s vote share dropped in the 2021 local government elections, the IFP’s grew to 26.42% and — more importantly — the ANC’s reached 41.8% across municipalities, far short of the magic 50%+1.

Since then, the two parties have taken control of uMhlathuze and other municipalities from the ANC through local coalition agreements and have set up a province-wide service delivery agreement in the councils they jointly control.

They have also consistently taken wards off the ANC since November 2021 by both backing the party with the largest presence in each by-election, most recently on Thursday in uMhlathuze when they won ward 13, made vacant by the resignation of the sitting ANC councillor.

The DA and IFP are also part of the Multiparty Charter for South Africa, the so-called Moonshot Pact signed in August which will see them go into next year’s national and provincial elections as coalition partners.

Pappas believes that this gives them a real chance.

“I think that we can. There is the mathematical side, the polling, and the polling shows that they are not doing so well,” he said.

“There is also sentiment on the ground. People are tired. People are fed up. They are either not going to vote, or they are going to change their vote,” Pappas said. “We have to convince people that changing their vote is better than letting go of the biggest power to bring about change.

“Mathematically it is difficult, but people said the DA would never win in KwaZulu-Natal and we won — a slim margin, but we won. People said we would not win beyond the Western Cape, but we have,” he said.

“Change is possible. KwaZulu-Natal was not always ANC. The people of KwaZulu-Natal changed their vote and they can change it again.”

The nature of the agreement with the IFP meant that both parties were aiming at taking votes off the ANC, rather than off each other, along with those who had never registered and those who had registered but were not voting.

“We are not looking for votes within the IFP and they aren’t looking to take votes away from the DA. In the future that might be different, but where we are in history now, we are not,” Pappas said.

The agreement, he said, also gave “some sort of comfort” to the process that had already started in the province towards giving voters “a credible alternative” that could replace the ANC. 

Working together ahead of the poll also allowed difficult discussions about post-election agreements to take place now and would assist in the process of forming a coalition government after next May should they succeed, he said.

Dealing with KwaZulu-Natal’s finances would be one of the priorities of a Pappas-led KwaZulu-Natal, as would be using the cooperative governance and traditional affairs ministry to intervene in “broken” municipalities.

Pappas believes that his experience in oversight as a member of the provincial legislature, a role he took on from 2019 after a term as an eThekwini councillor, will assist in his understanding of how the province works, as will his background in town planning.

Health and education in the province were both “failing people” and “have to be overhauled”, along with infrastructure critical for investment, if KwaZulu-Natal is to stop being “the backwater of South Africa”, he said.

Should Pappas become premier, a succession plan is in place for uMngeni municipality, whose “more than capable caucus” and “strong core of civil servants who understand what we are trying to do in government” are in place.

“I’m one person in this machine and there are a lot of people who can step up to the plate,” he said.

One of the DA’s rising stars, Pappas attributes his success thus far to hard work, “the fact that I love what I do” and his willingness to go above and beyond.

“I take what I do seriously,” I said.

Pappas believes the embedded culture in KwaZulu-Natal that elevates politicians above the people they are meant to serve and sees people having to “grovel” to get things done “is not right.”

“We are meant to be the servants of the people. That’s what it should be. Communities can be harsh, but that’s the life that we chose and that’s what it should be.”

“That’s what the government in KwaZulu-Natal needs to be. It needs to stop being a mechanism that enriches a few,” he said.

Pappas is more than aware of the enormity of the challenge he faces, but believes that taking it on is something that he has to do. “It’s scary, and difficult, but just because something is scary and difficult, doesn’t mean that you don’t do it.”