De Lille to lay charges against those who shared false post about her

After the Auditor-General confirmed that a report on Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille that was shared by some DA members is not genuine, she has decided to take the matter further.

News24 reported on Monday that it confirmed the document was a forgery. It was shared on Facebook by deputy chief whip Mike Waters, also a deputy federal chairperson of the DA, and National Council of Provinces MP Bronwynn Engelbrecht.

Other DA members subsequently reshared it. Waters said he’d merely found it on Twitter and reshared it from there.

The fake report lists breaches De Lille allegedly made relating to MyCiTi bus tenders.

Waters deleted his post from his Facebook profile this afternoon.

De Lille said on Monday afternoon that she would lay criminal charges and a complaint against those who’d shared the false allegations against her.

The supposed author of the document, Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu, not only didn’t sign it but said he’d never heard of it.

His spokesperson, Africa Boso, said they only planned to release their municipal findings next month. He also said they would never make any finding against an individual.

Makwetu himself told the website he would never personally sign municipal or provincial documents.

DA spokesperson Natasha Mazzone told News24 the fact that her party’s members had shared the document would not have a bearing on the outcome of their case against De Lille, as it did not form part of the charges against their mayor.

“Any DA leader or member who has shared this has simply fallen prey to fake news on social media platforms, which is quite common,” Mazzone was quoted as saying.

The Auditor-General’s report is expected to downgrade the City of Cape Town from clean to unqualified when it is released later.

On Friday, De Lille told The Citizen she has vowed to sue certain members of her party for defamation.

This as the DA was expected to announce by Monday whether or not they would fire De Lille, after months of back-and-forth public accusations, including an entire page of the party’s website dedicated to justifying the DA’s bid to remove her.

Speaking to Saturday Citizen, De Lille ripped into her fellow politicians in the party’s federal executive, and councillors in Cape Town.

She fingered deputy caucus leader JP Smith as having orchestrated a smear campaign against her, promising councillors jobs in return for voting in the internal motion of no confidence against her last month.

“I have got a lot of legal recourse. I will sue the hell out of them. It’s still coming,” she said, saying her name had been dragged through the mud over the past few months.

The embattled mayor’s woes began when the party filed criminal charges against her, accusing her of soliciting a bribe from businessperson Anthony Foul.

De Lille claimed that two DA councillors had been promised positions in exchange for voting her out.

“Angus McKenzie, the son of Patrick McKenzie from the old National Party, is exactly like his father. They were promised positions because all of the people that I have appointed must go. The reason why some of them voted for this motion is not because they supported it, it’s because they were promised positions.”

Former DA MP Juanita Terblanche has called out De Lille for playing the race card, saying she was also treated unfairly by the DA when she went through her own disciplinary process.

De Lille had claimed the treatment Terblanche received during her own battles within the party proved that white members got treated with kid gloves, while facing similar, or more serious allegations.

Terblanche said she was charged for misconduct for making an expense claim for make-up during the party’s 2014 election campaign trail.