KNYSNA POLITICAL NEWS - The DA this week would neither confirm nor deny claims that it was planning to subject its Knysna councillors as well as the sole ACDP councillor to lie detector tests to allegedly establish who voted against the Motions of No Confidence (MONC) it submitted against the current Knysna mayor, deputy mayor and speaker.
In a Facebook post last week, ANC councillor Claudine Croutz stated that after losing the motions of no confidence, the DA was planning to use a lie detector test on its councillors and the ACDP councillor.
"They want to find who voted against them," she told KPH this week.
The DA planned to oust Mayor Elrick van Aswegen, Speaker Mertle Gombo and Deputy Mayor Aubrey Tsengwa on 4 January 2021 with the help of the ACDP, but one of these councillors voted with the ANC camp and defeated the motion.
On 14 December last year, the DA and ACDP in Knysna agreed to work together in order to secure the key posts for the DA in Council. The DA had high hopes that they would take over the reins after the ACDP agreed to vote with them.
Knysna Council has 21 seats of which the DA occupies 10 and the ANC eight, while the ACDP, Cope and local Knysna Unity Congress (KUC) each has one seat. Because the mayor represents Cope, the DA needed the support of either the ACDP or KUC to attain a majority in the Knysna Council, and an agreement was reached with the ACDP.
In December the DA Knysna constituency leader, Dion George, said they plan to change the situation in Knysna as they now had the numbers.
At the time, DA provincial leader Bonginkosi Madikizela said they were looking forward to providing the stability that would enable Knysna to become the thriving town they all want it to be.
Keeping mum
Speaking to Knysna-Plett Herald on Monday, George did not deny or admit that his party was planning to conduct lie detector tests. He said he does not know what the speculation is about.
"Any discussions we have in the DA caucus is confidential. I am not going to entertain this matter." George said "they" (Croutz) can speculate as much as "they" want as to what the DA is going to do about the matter.
Asked who her source was, Croutz said the post was based on information on the Knysna grapevine. "I wrote the posts and you can confirm it with the DA," she said.
Commenting on Croutz's post, a member of the non-partisan municipal audit committee, Richard Thorpe, wrote, "And the problem is?"
At the time of going to print Thorpe had not responded to KPH's question whether he thought it was democratic to subject councillors who had cast a secret vote to lie detector tests.
ACDP councillor Patrick Makhetha declined to comment.
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