Marianne Merten
The Cape Town unicity committee established to vet public submissions on renaming two of the city’s oldest streets has declined to deal with fraudulent petitions and barred the media from having access to the documents for now.
The Mail & Guardian reported last week that many of the petitions purporting to support the name change of Adderley and Wale streets in honour of former president Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk were fraudulent.
A number of randomly selected people whose names appeared on the petitions told the M&G they were never approached and the signatures were not theirs.
A National Party organiser in Manenberg said she had asked “her members to sign” and passed on petition forms to another woman. In Mitchells Plain several people said they signed form letters after a “Democratic Alliance councillor” approached them.
On Thursday a committee dominated by the DA decided it would peruse submissions and set aside any that appear suspect, to be dealt with later. A smaller multi-party group was established to examine with “senior officials” the 1 339 submissions. It has three weeks in which to report back to the full committee.
A pile of white A4 sized papers copies of the submissions, according to committee chairperson and unicity speaker Danny de la Cruz sat as high as a water jug in front of him. Proceedings started with a prayer calling on God, to among other things, “free the committee from previous misunderstandings”.
At the start of its first session De la Cruz advised councillors of the guidelines from mayor Peter Marais to disregard any comment that appeared suspect, “treat with circumspection” any submissions by an institution that is not clearly identified, “ignore defamatory remarks” that are not to be published and bear in mind the possibility of solicited comments.
The committee was established at the end of May to consider and evaluate public comments and advise the unicity executive committee on “all the different sentiments expressed by the people and organisations”.
At Thursday’s inaugural sitting concern arose over the security of the documents. “Are they numbered?” was asked before it emerged they were not. “The first thing to be done is to number the stack immediately … before the committee,” De la Cruz ordered. And legal adviser Barnie Botha sprang into action.
A request from the M&G to gain access to all documentation in terms of the Access to Information Act, sent last week to the mayor’s office, was also placed before the committee.
DA councillors insisted they had not yet seen the documents, had only heard of allegations in the media and could not allow media reports to influence them.
Botha also advised that although the documents were not classified and could be made available, the committee would run risks. “There may be defamatory statements in it … You become party to the defamation.”
DA councillor Carol Beerwinkel said the committee should first peruse the documents “before the press are allowed to influence our thinking” and that reports of fraud were just “an assumption that was created by the press”.
She added: “Our integrity, our competency and our absolute objectivity as a group must never be compromised by outside influences.”
Despite the United Democratic Movement’s disagreement, De la Cruz summed up the position as: “We will then after we have done our work make the documents available to the press and broader public.”
And this also includes the commission of inquiry announced by Western Cape Premier Gerald Morkel. Said De la Cruz: “We are not reporting to another body [apart from the executive committee]. If anyone else wants insight, how and when we decide to make it available, that body will also have to stand in the queue.”
Anthony Hazell, a representative of DA national leader Tony Leon, said the renaming matter was a provincial one and that “Premier Morkel has already taken political responsibility” by announcing the commission of inquiry.
However, there appears to be some confusion about this commission and its members. Retired Stellenbosch-based NP parliamentarian Piet Marais no relation to the mayor confirmed he was asked to serve, but has not formally been notified.
The controversy around the renaming of the two streets started in April when Marais announced the two former presidents had accepted invitations to attend a ceremony scheduled for Saturday, Youth Day.
In the wake of negative responses from business, churches and Cape Town residents, Marais called for public submissions. In May he publicly claimed overwhelming support and later that those in favour outnumbered those opposed by two and a half to one.