Dalphine Tagwireyi
Councillor Paul Mokgosiyane is a candidate in the upcoming local government elections – contesting a seat in a ward he was recently chased away from!
Mokgosiyane, along with twelve others, were served with an interim court order by the Sabie Magistrate Court on 18 October to stay away from the Thaba-Chweu Municipality building.
Councillor Mokgosiyane and his colleagues are accused of disrupting and blocking services at Sabie Municipal offices by locking offices and threatening employees with violence.
Speaking to Scrolla.Africa, Mokgosiyane said he was chosen by the people.
“My opponents are afraid of my emergence because of what I represent and stand for,” he said.
He said the trumped-up charges have been pressed by his opponents in order to activate the ANC step-aside rule after the elections.
He now wants to sue those who had him arrested.
“This has happened to other comrades before, as those in power flex their muscles and remove elected officials through the step-aside rule,” he said.
“I want compensation. I was arrested for common assault and being in contempt of the interim court order, yet I had not done anything like that.”
The interim court order specifies that the respondents should stay away from Sabie Municipality and should appear before the court on 11 November for the final outcome.
DA councillor at Thaba Chweu Municipality Comfort Sibiya said this is symptomatic of the wider ANC problem of factionalism in the municipality.
“We are in a situation where one of their own is responsible for the closure of offices and damaging municipal property in a constituency he is standing in,” he said.
