Possible manipulation of votes on the renaming of two streets is under scrutiny in Cape Town
Marianne Merten
It was an inauspicious start to the public hearings to get to the bottom of whether and how submissions on the renaming of Cape Town’s two oldest streets might have been manipulated. Inquiry chairman advocate Willem Heath told those present: “If you do fall asleep you may fall and kill yourselves and someone else. So please be careful.”
The probe is the latest twist in the controversy which started on June 8 when the Mail & Guardian reported how the office of Cape Town mayor Peter Marais had been sitting on forged and solicited votes in support of his street-renaming proposal.
Mayoral spokesperson Johan Smit, who allegedly handed over a stack of
bogus support votes to a colleague with the comment “this is how you win elections”, spluttered his contempt for the M&G. He said: “They write first [and] it’s a fiction. They write first and then correct it.” Council legal adviser Ben Kieser, meanwhile, is alleged to have
issued instructions to others to count whole columns of “no” votes as only one negative ballot while properly recording each “yes” vote.
Marais’s office hit back with council documents, claiming that they provide “a complete refutation of any allegations of fraud, corruption and malpractice”. The documents included progress reports, the appointment of a multi-party subcommittee to advise on public sentiments and the instructions given to it by Marais to
ignore any suspect submissions.
But, in the face of such “objective documentation” council employee Victoria Johnson, who blew the whistle on Smit and Kieser, stuck to her guns and maintained: “It doesn’t change what I experienced and what was said to me.” Johnson’s explosive affidavit confirmed the M&G’s original expos, and prompted Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon to can a commission of inquiry under a Cape Town advocate and replace it with a fully-fledged probe by former judge Heath.
Johnson told the Heath inquiry that she was surprised when the multi-party committee re-numbered submissions as they had already been manually numbered in each right hand corner.
It also emerged at the hearing that submissions on the proposed renaming were first kept on top of a desk, then locked up in a cupboard and later kept in the mayor’s “bottom left-hand drawer”.
Smit testified on Thursday that the conclusions Johnson reached were all the result of a misunderstanding. “If she told me ‘I’m worried’ I would have
explained to her and we wouldn’t be sitting here today.”
Later Smit said he had known of, but “not participated” in, various campaigns to canvass support. They included the mayoral pastor’s initiative to collect submissions from his New Covenant Christian Church in Mitchells Plain. Council executive member David Erleigh had also paid for the printing of 500 letters of support and party organisers had “actively canvassed for support”.
No council staffers reported misgivings over the process, witnesses testified. Instead, it seemed that the renaming of Adderley and Wale streets in honour of former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk was a fait accompli.
But Nadiema Davids, an administrative assistant, told the hearing that Kieser had said in reference to the public who had voted against the move: “Fuck them. What do they know? It’s going ahead, no matter what,” while dictating a letter to De Klerk about the proposed name change. Davids told the hearing she had questioned how the letter could talk of reconciliation when there were so many objections from the public to the plan.
Marais, whose announcement in April sparked the controversy, cleared most of his diary this week to attend the hearings.
He stopped taking notes in his maroon leather notebook after day one. On day three of the hearings a handful of protesters greeted him with placards reading “Hands off our mayor”.
He sneaked snacks by eating with his hand covering his mouth, whispered to his attorney and often beamed a confident smile.
It was clear there is no love lost between Marais and deputy mayor Belinda Walker, the no-nonsense Democratic Party woman who has eschewed the trappings of political office such as bodyguards and an official luxury car.
Walker told Heath she decided to alert Leon to Johnson’s damning sworn statement. “I told him [Leon] I had permission from Mrs Johnson to show him the affidavit on a confidential basis.” Instead it was published a day later. “The matter was taken out of my hands by the leadership of my party”.
The split between DP and New National Party members was apparent throughout the hearings. During the regular intermissions small groups divided by party line and old loyalties huddled over tea, coffee, cookies and sandwiches and the hot lunches.