Knysna R68m tender scandal: Former mayor and officials to spend another week behind bars - IOL
Knysna's former mayor and two top municipal officials will spend another week behind bars after allegedly demanding kickbacks from a security contractor.
Thando Matika, acting municipal manager Boy Manqoba Ngubo and acting chief financial officer Busisiwe Lubelwana appeared in the Knysna Magistrate's Court on Monday on charges of corruption, extortion and money laundering.
The trio will only get their shot at freedom next week Monday, when they are due back in court to apply for bail.
National police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said the three were arrested by the police's Political Killings Task Team last week Thursday, after police were told that a businessman who held a security services contract with the municipality was being asked for kickbacks to keep it.
Mathe said the businessman had already paid hundreds of thousands of rand because he feared his contract would be cancelled.
The contract was a R68m municipal security tender, and the Special Investigating Unit is investigating the municipality and how the tender was awarded.
The arrests came a day after Matika refused to give up his seat at a council meeting, and speaker Mark Willemse called for law enforcement to remove him.
The ANC removed Matika as mayor and councillor on September 18, after the IEC named him and the Ward 7 councillor as SACP candidates for the November 4 local government elections.
Matika was arrested in the same week the SACP named him as its candidate for mayor of Knysna.
SACP provincial secretary Benson Ngqentsu said the party hoped the developments in Knysna were not being driven by palace politics, but that it stood firmly against corruption and every person was presumed innocent until proven guilty.
DA Knysna mayoral candidate Levael Davis welcomed the arrests and said they proved the party's three years of investigations in council had been about the people of Knysna and not about politics.
Ngubo is also the subject of a separate Hawks investigation, which the municipality said was instituted by Bitou Municipality before he started in Knysna in May.
Three ANC members were murdered in Knysna in August, when Matika's predecessor as mayor, Ward 8 councillor Aubrey Tsengwa, was shot dead in his car in Joodsekamp.
Former Ward 7 councillor Mandla Matiwane and Knysna Codeta chairperson Mandla Tyololo were shot dead in Bongani the following night.
Three suspects have appeared in the Knysna Magistrate's Court for Tsengwa's murder, while police are still investigating the killings of Matiwane and Tyololo.
