MyJHB

Stuff from Johannesburg

ANC Mayor absconds from garage without paying for fuel

Dear Editor

An attempt by the Mayor of ZF Mgcawu district municipality to dodge payment for a tank of fuel for the mayoral vehicle, has been referred by the DA to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) for investigation.

After hightailing it from a filling station in Olifantshoek over the weekend without paying, details of the vehicle, including its make and numberplate, were captured on camera and posted on Facebook in an attempt to find the driver. See pic here.

It soon came to light that the publicised details were those of the ZF Mgcawu mayoral vehicle, which was on a round trip from Upington to Kimberley, where Mayor Maryna Basson was to attend the Letsema Campaign Launch with ANC President Cyril Ramapohsa.

After being exposed, and being provided with a deadline to make payment, another trip of just over 320 kilometres, from Upington to Olifantshoek and back, was made after the weekend in order to settle the Mayor’s outstanding account.

Regardless of whether or not she herself was driving, it is scandalous that the Mayor would deem it okay to abscond from a garage without paying. She has brought the reputation of the ZF Mgcawu district municipality into disrepute and she must be held accountable for such criminal behaviour.

I have submitted a request to the Chairperson of MPAC for an investigation, which should not only probe the mayor’s appalling actions, but also whether she was in fact authorised to attend an ANC party political event, at municipal expense.

I have further insisted that the round trip undertaken from Upington to Olifantshoek, to make payment to the garage, must also be probed and wasteful and fruitless expenditure claimed back from the Mayor.

Fuel costs may be high but no one, not even the ANC mayor, is above the law.

Regards

Flip Van Der Steen, Cllr
DA Whip, Dawid Kruiper Municipality

Category:

Top Star Drive-In: The Cinema on the Mountain of Gold

The Ferreira Dump began growing in the late 1800s, composed of the crushed rock and chemical residue left over after early, inefficient mining processes had extracted as much gold as the technology of the time allowed. By the 1960s, it was a flat-topped, man-made mesa overlooking the city. In a stroke of entrepreneurial genius, the surface was tarred and the Top Star Drive-In was opened. It quickly became a South African institution. Its appeal was not just the movies, but the unparalleled view: as the sun set, the massive white screen would flicker to life against a backdrop of the glowing skyscrapers of the Central Business District, separated from the viewer only by the elevated M2 highway.

In the decades before television arrived in South Africa (1976), the Top Star was a primary social hub. It was a democratic space in an undemocratic time; while the city below was strictly segregated, the “car” served as a private bubble that allowed a degree of social freedom not found in traditional theaters. For many Johannesburgers, the Top Star was a site of nostalgic rites of passage—first dates, family outings where children were piled into the back of station wagons with blankets and flasks of tea, and the Saturday “car market” where the parking lot transformed into a sprawling hub for buying and selling second-hand vehicles.