Questionable priorities.

[Dave A]

I'm reminded of the fact that people are very happy to spend other people's money but tend to be rather more circumspect about how they spend their own.

Helen Zille is incensed that Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool is setting up a commission to investigate the Cape Town "spy" saga. She makes some rather telling points:

Zille said she had written a letter to Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool asking him to suspend the commission on the grounds that it was a "gross abuse of power" and would waste taxpayers' money, promoting the African National Congress's (ANC) "political purposes".

She said the Erasmus commission would rack up more than R5-million in legal costs alone, of which the city could expect to pay about R2-million.

She said the police had been investigating the matter for the past few months and found nothing.

"The only reasonable assumption to be drawn is that the police have found no evidence of any wrongdoing by any person."

The commission would further result in a waste of resources as virtually the entire upper echelon of the city manager's office, the speaker, the mayor and various other councillors had been subpoenaed.

The Erasmus commission was established -- "ostensibly" according to Zille -- to look into the city's appointment of George Fivaz and Associates to investigate councillor Badih Chaaban.

In her 14-page letter Zille wrote that while Rasool was prepared to pay more than R5-million investigating the use of R3 500, no inquiries were ever made into the Big Bay land tender.

Dyanti also never inquired into former city manager Wallace Mgoqi's appointment of the Full Swing Trading company in the run-up to the previous local government elections.

Dyantyi had further failed to confirm Chaaban's dismissal from the city council.
full story from M&G here

Spend R5 million investigating the spending of R3500.00?

Now if that expense was coming out of of his own pocket, I reckon Mr Rasool would be reassessing his priorities.

[Chatmaster]

CT has been a real pain for the ANC since they won the election. I firmly believe that they are so afraid that the DA shows the country just how successful they can run a city compared to the ANC that they would do anything to get them out.

[duncan drennan]

We've got the sea, the mountain, and the DA...what more could you want?

[IanF]

people are very happy to spend other people's money but tend to be rather more circumspect about how they spend their own.

Dave
Off the point of this thread, but one thing I was told is aim your main efforts at selling to these people who spend other peoples money. It works for me.

[Dave A]

Yeah. It works for me too, Ian.

But when it comes to politicians, they are spending our money. All of us.

Now who votes to spend R5 million on a witchunt involving R3 500.00 expenditure, especially when an earlier low budget investigation has already confirmed the expense was incurred correctly? Ah - Mr. Rasool. Why thank you kind sir. When can I expect your cheque?

[Dave A]

It's official. The Erasmus Commission has finally closed its doors.

The Erasmus commission has officially shut down in the wake of this week's high court judgement declaring it illegal, commission secretary Zithulele Twala said on Thursday.

"It's no longer in existence," he said. "It has stopped pursuant to the high court judgement."

He said he and evidence leader Frans Petersen, who were employed full-time by the commission, had gone back to their practices, himself as an attorney and Petersen to his job with a forensic auditing firm.

When the office of Western Cape Premier Lynne Brown confirmed that she would not take the matter any further by appealing the judgement, "then obviously that [means the] information must be destroyed", he said.

The commission was set up by former premier Ebrahim Rasool last year to probe alleged irregularities in the City of Cape Town.

A full bench of judges sitting in the Cape High Court found that he set up the commission merely in a bid to politically embarrass the Democratic Alliance (DA), and that it was unconstitutional.

They also found that Erasmus, as a sitting judge, should not have accepted the chairpersonship of the commission.
full story from M&G here

So - When does the commission of enquiry into the activities of Ebrahim Rasool start? And is anyone going to try to recover this wasteful expenditure?

[wynn]

Yep! Helen is going after Ebrahim and Judge Erasmus.

[murdock]

i wish everyone would just stop wasting our tax money... clearly there is way to much money in the goverment coffers...let zuma and all the other goverment crooks go they are just wasting peoples hard earned money on free advertising for them...there just seems to be tooo much surplus funds available.

disban the scorpions we all know they cant lock these crooks away...look at shaik he will be out soon on medical grounds what crock of bullsh*t...let him go he is just costing us thousands in medical costs and making an absolute mockery of the justice system...not that there is one for these polititions they seem to be above the law.