Beaufort West mayor Truman Prince is unapologetic about requesting that a tender be given to a construction company which was “sympathetic and having a relationship with the ANC”.<\/p>\n
This was after the Democratic Alliance accused Prince of blatant corruption for writing a letter to the board chairperson of the Construction Education Training Authority (CETA) asking that he meet with a certain contractor.<\/p>\n
This was for the construction of a skills development and trade test centre to be built in the town.<\/p>\n
Prince, however, said he was a seasoned politician and would never be stupid enough to ask for corrupt favours.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t ask for money,” he told News24.<\/p>\n
“In that letter it doesn’t say I am looking for R25 million or R50 million. I said… the ANC, when we get this skills centre we will go through our own procurement and get a tenderpreneur who can do the job and which the ANC will benefit at the end of the day. According to me there is nothing wrong.”<\/p>\n
However, he says the chairperson did not respond to his letter and CETA used its own procurement for the project.<\/p>\n
“This is what we should like to happen but we never said this is what must happen.”<\/p>\n
He said the Beaufort West municipality conducted all its business in the parameters of the law.<\/p>\n
In the letter, dated December 3, 2015, Prince wrote to CETA chairperson Raymond Cele asking him to meet with Mawonga Furmen.<\/p>\n
“We are also sceptical that our construction companies will not be in a position to benefit from this project, as the sourcing of service providers from your end will attract more tenderers from the Gauteng province and thus disadvantage our people,” Prince wrote.<\/p>\n
“We are an ANC-led municipality, we are therefore in need of financial injection for our 2016 local government election campaign and therefore will also want to see construction companies sympathetic and having a relationship with the ANC to benefit, in order for these companies to inject funds in our election campaign process.”<\/p>\n
Read the full letter here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Prince acknowledges that he wrote the letter and signed it.<\/p>\n He did not see a problem with his request. The only error he possibly saw was that he sent the letter on his mayoral letterhead.<\/p>\n “Maybe it was an oversight for me writing it on my mayoral letterhead.<\/p>\n “But from my side I didn’t do anything wrong. I said this was going to be a good thing for the ANC before the elections.”<\/p>\n He wanted to transform the economy of the Central Karoo, which he claimed was still monopolised by the white minority.<\/p>\n But Prince says he is prepared to be “crucified” for his views.<\/p>\n “If I must be crucified as an ANC mayor to enhance business… then I don’t care.<\/p>\n “I was trying to… give the poorest of the poor the opportunity to go into business. It’s long overdue. The economy still belongs to a few white people in this country.”<\/p>\n Prince accused the DA of trying to put the ANC in a bad light.<\/p>\n This comes as the country prepares to go to local government elections later this year.<\/p>\n He said it was the DA’s tender processes which had to be investigated.<\/p>\n “You who shouts and talks about corruption must be investigated. If you show a finger then you must always remember there are three fingers pointing back at you.”<\/p>\n The DA has said it will lay criminal charges against Prince on Thursday.<\/p>\n News<\/a>24<\/p>\n \u2018Unbelievable\u2019 letter shows blatant corruption in SA government<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Beaufort West mayor Truman Prince is unapologetic about requesting that a tender be given to a construction company which was “sympathetic and having a relationship with the ANC”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":54471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-110213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-active"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110213"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110225,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110213\/revisions\/110225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More on politics in SA<\/h3>\n
How government plans to legalise corruption: Helen Zille <\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"