Durban — The DA in KwaZulu-Natal has challenged its former provincial leader Sizwe Mchunu to produce evidence of nepotism against its premier candidate, Chris Pappas.
This is after Mchunu made damning allegations against Pappas in a letter to the public protector’s office on Wednesday.
In the letter, Mchunu asked the public protector’s office to investigate allegations that Pappas’s fiancé, Jean-Pierre Prinsloo’s Umgeni Tourism organisation was given a R100 000 grant by uMngeni Municipality while the top 5 tourism entities/organisations operating within uMngeni Municipality received R10 000 each per month.
He said that the R100 000 grant formed the basis for an investigation of nepotism and corruption by Pappas and uMngeni Municipality.
Pappas is the mayor of uMngeni Local Municipality under Umgungundlovu District Municipality in Pietermaritzburg.
“A couple of weeks before uMngeni Municipality closed for December holidays in 2022 (December 11), JP Prinsloo’s organisation (uMngeni Tourism NPO) received a whopping R100 000, four months before the end of the council’s financial year. Besides this being a precedent that has never occurred in uMngeni Municipality, the amount granted to Prinsloo’s organisation far exceeds any of the grants given to the other entities advocating for a similar venture.
“To this end there has not been sight of any documents by both uMngeni Tourism and the municipality, justifying the necessity of this ludicrous precedent and exception in favour of Prinsloo’s organisation. There also is no evidence of any expenditure plan/breakdown presented by Prinsloo’s organisation in regards to how exactly they were to spend their enormous grant.
“It has also emerged that mayor Chris Pappas’s fiancé JP Prinsloo is the sole owner of the company called Growth Spurt Consultancy (GSC) and which company was appointed as consultants to uMngeni Tourism NPO in hosting the Light Up uMngeni Festival. Surprisingly, Prinsloo’s GSC company was only registered this year (2023), whilst it already had been in operation,” partly read the letter.
Mchunu who left the DA after losing his position and joined the ANC, confirmed writing to the protector’s office on Wednesday, saying it was Pappas who must prove the allegations wrong against him.
“It’s allegations that’s why I wrote to the public protector and asked her to investigate but the onus is on Pappas to prove that his municipality did not give his fiancé R100 000 while others got R10 000,” said Mchunu.
He said Prinsloo was a councillor in eThekwini who resigned and relocated to uMngeni Municipality to be closer to Pappas. The Daily News has learnt that Prinsloo was no longer with the organisation and left in July. Attempts to get Prinsloo to respond were unsuccessful.
Pappas referred queries to the provincial party leadership.
DA’s KZN chairperson, Dean Macpherson said it was interesting to note and by his own admission, his entire complaint was based on unnamed social media posts, and challenged him to produce any evidence which he said he knew he could not because it did not exist.
Pappas has been the talk of the town on social media after he was chosen as the DA premier candidate for KZN.
The public protector’s office had not responded to requests for comment by publication time.
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Daily News