SoPlett! | Plettenberg Bay

BITOU opposition councillor Memory Booysen’s bid to be paid an outstanding R12000 in salary has turned into an acrimonious battle that could cost the municipality tens of thousands of rands in legal fees.

Memory Booysen

The ANC-controlled municipality is suing Booysen for defamation because he allegedly accused the town of misleading the court when it challenged a judgment ordering payment of his salary.

The municipality and municipal manager Lonwabo Ngoqo are demanding R300000 from Booysen and his attorney, Paul Jordaan.

Booysen and DA councillor Johann Brummer – also on the receiving end of a Bitou defamation lawsuit – yesterday accused the municipality of wasteful expenditure, saying the legal actions were futile because they did not have the money, even if the court ruled against them.

Brummer is being sued by Bitou’s six ANC councillors for about R2,7-million.

Booysen’s demand for his salary apparently revolves around a dispute over the date of his dismissal from the ANC and the subsequent loss of his Council seat in 2007.

Council received a letter from the ANC’s provincial leadership dated August 1 that year, saying Booysen had been dismissed from the party, but he appealed.

The municipality then received another letter from the party stating: “This is to certify that Mr Memory Booysen, who appeared before the National Disciplinary Committee of the ANC, was expelled from the ANC on 24 August, 2007.”

Booysen contended that he should be paid his salary for August 1 to 24 but ANC chief whip Euan Wildeman blocked the payment.

Booysen obtained a judgment against Bitou in May last year to have the R12000 paid, and when the municipality applied to have the judgment rescinded, Booysen told the court the application was “deliberately misleading”.

In Brummer’s case, the ANC councillors claim he defamed them in comments to The Herald and other media in 2007 concerning the mayor’s VIP protection unit, as well as in published letters alleging corruption in the Council.

Some of his letters refer to Wildeman and former municipal manager George Seitisho, who have been charged with fraud and theft. They have not been asked to plead and the case is ongoing.

In his answering plea, Brummer admitted he had made the statements but said the comments had been justifiable.

He is still awaiting word from the Western Cape government on a recommendation that he be dismissed after being found guilty by a Council-instigated disciplinary hearing of contravening the Councillors’ Code of Conduct.

Brummer has labelled the hearing a “witch hunt against a corruption whistle-blower”.

Disciplinary action is also pending against another DA councillor, Elaine Paulse, for failing to declare receiving a “Louis Vuiton” designer handbag as a gift – although the bag is a cheap knock-off that Paulse says she bought for R20. before she became a councillor.

Brummer yesterday said the various lawsuits and actions against the ANC’s political opponents were “fruitless and wasteful expenditure of municipal funds”.

“These lawsuits are classic SLAPP actions aimed at silencing the ANC’s critics,” he said.

A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit “intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defence until they abandon their criticism”.

Bitou officials were out of office yesterday and could not immediately comment.

Source: The Herald Online
Written By: Janine Oelofse