The man who has to prevent taps from running dry in Cape Town faces the axe after he raised concerns about alleged tender irregularities within the city’s transport department.
Craig Kesson‚ an executive director in the office of mayor Patricia de Lille‚ is the city’s chief resilience officer and is tasked with leading the team working to avoid water’s "day zero". But on Tuesday he may be out in the cold after he raised serious allegations against city manager Achmat Ebrahim and the city’s transport and urban development authority commissioner, Melissa Whitehead.
The city was due to hold a council meeting to discuss four reports that recommend Kesson be suspended, pending an investigation. However‚ the meeting was scheduled to take place behind closed doors.
TimesLIVE has seen copies of the agenda items‚ which allege that‚ among other things‚ Kesson leaked confidential city information to a member of the DA‚ who is not a member of council. The report further alleges that Kesson committed serious misconduct by instructing the scanning of forensic reports onto external storage devices. The reports span five years and consist of close to 1‚000 documents.
Kesson claimed that Ebrahim had failed to ensure proper implementation of contracts for the "provision of station management and related services" for MyCiti buses.
He also wrote a report in which he alleged that: "The city manager failed to properly consider and/or report to council allegations against Melissa Whitehead‚ the then-commissioner [for Transport of Cape Town] regarding an investigation into alleged irregularities‚ fruitless and/or wasteful expenditure in the management of a contract related to the rapid transit fare system."
Kesson also claimed there had been irregularities in payments for Volvo bus chassis. These statements have all been deemed "frivolous and vexatious" in one of the reports to be discussed on Tuesday.
Council speaker Dirk Smit confirmed that the special closed meeting was requested by De Lille. According to the council rules‚ councillors are barred from speaking about confidential meetings.
DA and opposition councillors‚ speaking on condition of anonymity‚ accused De Lille and those aligned to her of taking action against anyone found to challenge Ebrahim and Whitehead.
Tuesday’s meeting came amid rifts within the ruling DA‚ which culminated in a public spat between De Lille and safety and security MMC, JP Smith. Following the spat‚ the DA created a sub-committee‚ headed by parliamentary chief whip John Steenhuisen‚ to deal with the matter.
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