An Open Letter to Premier Lynne Brown

Oudtshoorn
24 February 2009

The Premier: Western Cape
Ms Lynne Brown
Cape Town

Premier Brown

The débâcle surrounding Oudtshoorn’s summarily dismissed municipal manager

Your predecessor, Mr Ebrahim Rasool, placed the Oudtshoorn municipality under administration on 14 March 2007 and appointed Mr Louis Scheepers administrator.

Scheepers personally attended to the selection of candidates for municipal manager. Although he was assisted by four councilors – Erik Ngalo (ANC); Johan  Olivier (DA); Ewa Fortuin (OD) and Ben Pannas (Civics) – it is generally acknowledged that he reduced his advisers to mere observers, a fact established by Scheepers’ final action in appointing a municipal manager.

On August 10 Scheepers brought a motion before council to appoint the reverend Noël Pietersen. Only two councilors, Pierre Nel (DA) and Hendrik (Lampies) Lamprecht (ANC), voiced concern and proposed to determine the security and other considerations of the appointment. Nel and Lamprecht were ruled out of order by Scheepers and within a moment’s notice thereafter appointed Pietersen municipal manager.

A local business leader, Mr Nic Barrow, established, expeditiously and by such august managerial technology as the telephone and the Internet, that Pietersen was an unsuitable candidate.

In the document library on the website of the Ukhahlamba District Municipality Barrow found a paper entitled Integrated Development Plan 2007-2012 and on pages 76-77 and 82-83 of this paper he discovered that Pietersen

• Created fictitious debtors and creditors;
• Without fail submitted financial statements late;
• Used allowances to pay salaries;
• Recorded fictitious accrued surpluses;
• Allowed an acute cash flow shortage;
• Allowed unauthorised expenses;
• Misused council vehicles;
• Failed to effect bank reconciliations;
• Tolerated discrepancies between actual employees and remuneration records;
• Presented the 2006 financials showing a surplus in the amount of R58m, while the Auditor General was of the professional opinion that a shortfall of R35.5m was an accurate reflection;
• Failed to submit auditable records to the Auditor General in each of the five years of his tenure.

At the time the Ukhahlamba District Municipality declined to renew Pietersen’s contract, there were five complaints of cheque fraud investigated against him by the Burgersdorp SAPS (MAS 156/11/2007) and the district municipality were investigating fraud charges against him relating to the purchase of a R400,000 vehicle.

A single telephone call to the Ukhahlamba District Municipality confirmed that the municipality’s financial statements were “in a state of rot and chaos”.

OudtshoornOnline puts it to you, Premier Brown, that your government’s administrator Scheepers acted either with malice aforethought or with wanton disregard for even the most elementary principles of recruitment.

In one’s mind’s eye one can imagine a series of questions and answers along these lines:

Scheepers: Are you currently employed, reverend Pietersen?

Pietersen: No, I am unemployed at present.

S: Where were you previously employed?

P: At the Ukhahlamba District Municipality.

S: Why was your employment terminated?

P: The District Municipality declined to renew my contract.

S: Indeed! Why did the Ukhahlamba District Municipality decline to renew your contract?

The mind boggles.

Why, by all the pantheons, were not these questions asked?

Or, so help us all, were these question perchance asked and the answers ignored?

Although one is discombobulated by the virgin ineptitude displayed by Scheepers in determining Pietersen’s qualifications and experience for the senior post of municipal manager, no measure of margin can possibly suggest to even the most uncritical of minds the reasons for Scheepers denying elected officials, encumbered by administration as they were notwithstanding, a reasonable opportunity to debate the merits and demerits of a candidate about to be vested with powers and responsibilities critical to the prosperity of the town.

This February 13th the reverend Noël Pietersen was found guilty of specific contraventions of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) and the Municipal Structures Act (MSA).

The sanction handed down on February 23 was summary dismissal. The reverend Noël Pietersen is no longer the municipal manager of Oudtshoorn.

Pietersen’s tenure has cost Oudtshoorn a fortune. OudtshoornOnline has failed to elicit specific numbers from the municipality since January 27, but the cost remains reasonably computable.

Whatever the cost is determined to be, madam premier, OudtshoornOnline demands, on behalf of the ratepayers of Oudtshoorn, that your government reimburses the town for the catastrophic appointment of the reverend Noël Pietersen by your government’s feckless administrator.

Drewan D Baird, BTh, BBA
Publisher and Editor
OudtshoornOnline