Pretoria News
*Anti-graft march hits CBD traffic*** *Karabo Ngoepe and Mogomotsi Magome, Pretoria News, 7 November 2012*Members of Cosatu, the SA National Civic Organisation and the SACP brought traffic to a standstill when they marched to the mayor's office to deliver a memorandum of grievances.
At least 800 people, dressed in red T-shirts and singing with placards in hand, walked through the streets, causing traffic to back up.
The marchers said they were worried about the way in which the municipality was being run.
They said the city was rife with corruption, nepotism, maladministration, favouritism and failure to implement collective agreements adopted at meetings.
_*SIU*_Another issue that sent the marchers to Kgosientso Ramokgopa's doorstep was the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) report detailing massive corruption in divisions of the municipality.
The SIU has confirmed that high-ranking officials in the Tshwane municipality are implicated in the corruption.
It has also confirmed that the probe, which the SIU expects to finalise by the end of March, has identified irregularities in more than R500 million in contracts.
Other matters have been reported to the SIU since the probe began and could be included in the investigation.
"There are high-ranking officials involved in some of the matters," said SIU spokesman Boy Ndala.
"Fifteen investigations have been finalised, and reports on these are being finalised before submission to municipality for action."
The probe was launched in 2010 following allegations, made from various quarters, of maladministration, mismanagement and corruption in the municipality.
_*Secretary-General*_The secretary-general of the SACP's Greater Tshwane area, Apson Makaung, has demanded that the report be made public.
Makaung said the SACP did not want to see a situation similar to that which occurred after advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza submitted his report on the investigation relating to then-city manager Kiba Kekana. Kekana was given a golden handshake of about R2.3m, for reasons not disclosed to the people of Tshwane.
"We demand that the report be made public, because [the probe] was conducted using [rayepayers'] money. People deserve to know what happened.
The Ntsebeza report was not made public and we were surprised when [Kekana] was given a golden handshake. We don't want to see a similar incident with the SIU report," Makaung said.
_*COSATU President*_Cosatu president S'dumo Dlamini was also present at the march and echoed Makaung's sentiments. He said Cosatu wanted about 1 500 employees dismissed from the waste and parks division to be reinstated.
He said the workers were employed by labour brokers and were unfairly dismissed regardless of the collective agreement on phasing out labour brokers.
Among those dismissed is Ernest Boshielo, who said the workers were not given a reason for being axed. Ramokgopa had promised them that they would be permanently employed.
"We started as volunteers and the mayor last year promised to give us permanent jobs by June of 2012 and add 3 000 more people.
We were surprised when we were dismissed and the 3 000 new people got jobs that we were promised," he said.
The large group, which had gathered at the Munitoria, demanded that their memorandum be accepted by Ramokgopa personally, but it was the mayoral committee member for housing and human settlements, Joshua Ngwenyama, who accepted it.
Mayoral spokesman Pieter de Necker said Ramokgopa would study the memorandum.
Asked if the issues relating to the SIU investigations being raised by the marchers were valid, he said a lot of the matters they were raising had been attended to.
*From: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/anti-graft-march-hits-cbd-traffic-1.1418978#.UJo7Dm9OTN0*
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