Helen Zille said ANC claims that she has created an “informal electoral office” are “so insane they do not warrant a serious reply”.
|||Cape Town - Western Cape premier Helen Zille has rejected ANC allegations that she has created an “informal electoral office” as “so insane and absurd that they do not warrant a serious reply”.
At a media report-back on Monday after a weekend lekgotla of the provincial ANC, chairman Marius Fransman said Zille had created the “office” with the appointment of two civil servants who had previously worked for the Independent Electoral Commission.
Fransman said the appointment of former municipal electoral officer for the Cape Town metro Brent Gerber as the provincial government’s director-general and the appointment of former IEC senior manager Michael Hendrickse as director of human capital in the Premier’s Office was “proof” that the “electoral office” exists.
“If you bring an expert on municipal elections and bring them into the premier’s office and you go and recruit another IEC elections officer and you bring him in, what are they doing? They are not playing marbles there. They are sitting with full information of the IEC,” he said.
When the Cape Times put Fransman’s allegation to Zille, she replied: “Marius Fransman is clearly in need of his monthly Pastafarian ritual of dancing around a block of cheese on Table Mountain. Perhaps the Flying Spaghetti Monster will help him regain his senses.”
She later added: “Every time we get a query as daft as this, we will comment by saying that the moon is made of green cheese.
“The allegations are so insane and absurd that they do not warrant a serious reply. The ANC regularly calls press conferences and invents allegations. If the DA continually called press conferences to spout fabricated nonsense, we would be taken apart by the media, for good reason.”
Zille’s spokesman, Zak Mbhele, said Gerber had joined the provincial government in 2010.
IEC spokeswoman Kate Bapela said there was no cooling off period or restriction on where staff could work when they left the commission.
“People who leave go to the private sector, some NGOs and others might join local authorities like municipalities,” she said.
Bapela said the IEC did not keep track of where former employees went after they resigned and she couldn’t say how many had joined the government.
She said the only restriction at the IEC she could remember was that anyone who had held a political position had to wait for five years before joining the commission.
cobus.coetzee@inl.co.za
Cape Times