MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday
A BILL of at least R220 000 – excluding legal fees of tens of thousands of rands – is expected for the two official probes into whether public submissions on the renaming of two Cape Town streets might have been manipulated.
The costs for the current inquiry by corruption buster advocate Willem Heath and the abandoned probe by senior counsel Joe van der Westhuizen are to be shared between the Cape Town council and provincial administration.
The Western Cape government is picking up a R200 000 tab for the Heath investigation, although costs are likely to increase after the probe was extended to August 28.
The Cape Town city council will pay the lawyers who represented mayor Peter Marais, unicity whistleblower Victoria Johnson and the two men her affidavit implicated – legal adviser Ben Kieser and mayoral media representative Johan Smit. It must also pay about R20 000 for the initial inquiry.
The inquiries followed an expos by the Mail & Guardian on June 8 of how submissions in favour of renaming Adderley and Wale streets in honour of former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk were forged or actively solicited by Democratic Alliance councillors on the Cape Flats. Marais called for public participation after a widespread negative reaction to his announcement in April.
While Marais and councillors were always assured their legal costs would be paid by the unicity, similar arrangements for Johnson, Kieser and Smit were made only last Tuesday. However, anyone found to have “acted in bad faith” will have to repay the legal costs.
Western Cape MEC for Local Government Pierre Uys says the Heath probe will be funded from the existing budget through savings during this financial year. If that is not possible, then Premier Gerald Morkel will be asked for an additional budget allocation.
While Uys maintains the cost is justified to properly investigate fraud, corruption or maladministration, Marais is more cautious. “Yes, I welcome that this investigation be done if it could come to the truth in a more forceful fashion than the previous committee I appointed,” he told Heath.
Marais’s showmanship emerged during his testimony last Saturday. For more than five hours he cracked jokes, used the witness stand as a political platform, defended his pastor Theo Noble for soliciting support from his parishioners and lashed out against his deputy, Belinda Walker, whom he accused of playing detective. He said of Johnson: “It wasn’t her job to be a watchdog … if people don’t know their job description then the city is in trouble.”
Although the controversy around the renaming proposal raised tensions between Democratic Party and New National Party members in the DA, the boisterous mayor insisted nothing had gone wrong. “Absolutely nothing … the system has been styled to perfection.”