Brett Herron resigns from DA, says racism exists within the party

Nearly a day after the Democratic Alliance laid criminal charges against former Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille and mayoral committee member for transport and housing Brett Herron, Herron has announced his resignation from the party making him the ninth member to leave.

This also comes on the heels of De Lille’s resignation both as a member of the DA and mayor of the City of Cape Town. Two additional members stepped down with De Lille yesterday and she promised that more would follow.

https://twitter.com/lesterkk/status/1057949792859553792

Speaking to members of the media in Salt River on Thursday, Herron made some explosive claims about the party and lambasted them for cancelling an affordable housing project planned for the city.

https://twitter.com/lesterkk/status/1057950095692521472

DA City of Cape Town MMC for Transport and Housing Brett Herron has resigned with immediate effect. Said cancelling affordable housing project at Salt River market site was the last straw (@itchybyte)

— Team News24 (@TeamNews24) November 1, 2018

Holding the DA manifesto, Herron slammed its contents as a lie and stated he was wasting his time working towards fulfilling the manifesto’s mandate to integrate communities because party leaders were undoing his work by “killing” projects behind the scenes.

https://twitter.com/noma_solwandle/status/1057950502103760896

Herron was charged by the DA terms of the Prevention and Combatting of Corrupt Activities Act in line with the recommendations of the Bowmans report.

In a statement released by Herron last week, he claimed to be “shocked by the so-called findings of the Bowmans Report” and he rejected their conclusions.

Part of Herron’s statement reads:

“Inexplicably, there are two conflicting Bowmans reports. Only one of them attempts to implicate me in wrongdoing – and not with direct or prima facie evidence, as one would expect from an investigation conducted by a lawyer, but based on nothing.

The one Bowmans report states that my involvement in the procurement process ‘has not been sufficiently established’. This is a flagrant misrepresentation of the indisputable facts contained in their own report, and is, therefore, a false conclusion as the report contains no allegation, no prima facie evidence, no direct evidence, no inference nor any suggestion by any person or document that I was involved in the procurement process at all.

The conclusion that my involvement has not been ‘sufficiently established’ and their recommendation that my involvement be investigated is irrational and a non sequitur.

As a result I can only surmise that it is based on their own unchecked bias, alternatively, it is based on external influences that are not disclosed in the report. The conclusion that something corrupt happened, or that I influenced the procurement process, is so poorly constructed it is hard to believe it was properly considered by a legally qualified person before being presented.

I wish to state categorically that I have nothing to hide and that my conduct at all times has been beyond reproach. When these allegations of an improper procurement process first emerged in November 2017, I wrote to the Speaker of Council requesting that the allegations be investigated. Now that an investigation has taken place, at great expense to our ratepayers, the investigators are not satisfied with their inability to find any proof of wrongdoing on my part so they recommend another investigation. This was their task in the first place.”

More DA members are expected to resign in the coming weeks.

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