‘Mayor was set up to take a fall’

Sharika Regchand

Trade unionist Chris Ndlela had been set up for a fall by being appointed Msunduzi mayor, the Young Communist League said yesterday.

League spokesman Mduduzi Manana said they believed that Ndlela’s appointment had been “orchestrated”.

“He was put in there with corrupt people so that when something goes wrong, it’s the working class leadership that looks bad. It’s as if he has been thrown in a dam full of crocodiles,” he said.

Manana was speaking as the ANC’s provincial executive committee met yesterday to discuss issues including calls to have the party’s Msunduzi regional executive committee disbanded.

The meeting would resume today.

The ANC has come under pressure from angry tripartite alliance members to remove councillors they believe failed to play their oversight roles at municipalities which had performed poorly.

The party’s detractors also argued that the regional committee members had placed themselves in top municipal positions.

Manana and the SACP called for the resignation of “honest councillors” in a show of support against corruption in the embattled capital.

Councillor Baboo Baijoo, who has been tipped to replace Msunduzi’s former deputy mayor Alpha Shelembe, said that “the correct thing” to do was to wait for the outcome of investigations by a provincial task team and the meeting of the provincial executive committee.

“We don’t want to make the city ungovernable at this time when ratepayers are feeling extremely fragile,” he said.

Police said yesterday that stemming from Shelembe’s arrest in connection with a fire at the ANC’s Pietermaritzburg offices, investigations were continuing into whether other ANC members may have been involved.

Meanwhile, former Msunduzi deputy mayor Mervin Dirks was informed on Friday that Premier Zweli Mkhize and his wife, May, were suing him for defamation.

Dirks had alleged that a R280 million tender had been awarded by Msunduzi to a consortium that May Mkhize had been part of, and that she had resigned when the media started asked questions.

The premier’s spokesman, Ndabezinhle Sibiya, said the “unfounded allegations” had created the impression that the premier’s wife was “a corrupt, unethical person.

Dirks, however, said he stood by his statement.