Cape Town council meets behind closed doors to discuss allegations

The man who has to prevent taps from running dry in Cape Town faces the axe after he raised concerns about alleged tender irregularities within the city's transport department.

Craig Kesson‚ an executive director in the office of Mayor Patricia de Lille‚ is the city’s chief resilience officer and is tasked with leading the team working to avoid “Day Zero”.

But on Tuesday he may be out in the cold after he raised serious allegations against city manager Achmat Ebrahim and the city’s transport and urban development authority commissioner Melissa Whitehead.

The city is due to hold a council meeting to discuss four reports that recommend that Kesson should be suspended pending an investigation. However‚ the meeting will be held behind closed doors.

TimesLIVE has seen copies of the agenda items‚ which allege that‚ among other things‚ Kesson leaked confidential city information to a member of the Democratic Alliance‚ who is not a member of council.

The report further alleges that Kesson committed serious misconduct by instructing the scanning of forensic reports onto external storage devices. The reports span five years and consist of close to 1‚000 documents.

Kesson claimed that Ebrahim had failed to ensure proper implementation of contracts for the “provision of station management and related services” for MyCiti buses.

Kesson also wrote a report in which he alleged that: “The city manager failed to properly consider and/or report to council allegations against Melissa Whitehead‚ the then commissioner [for Transport of Cape Town] regarding an investigation into alleged irregularities‚ fruitless and/or wasteful expenditure in the management of a contract related to the Rapid Transit Fare System.”

These statements have been deemed “frivolous and vexatious” in one of the reports to be discussed on Tuesday.

Kesson also claimed that there had been irregularities in payments for Volvo bus chassis.

Council speaker Dirk Smit had confirmed to TimesLIVE that the special closed meeting has been requested by De Lille.

According to the council rules‚ councillors are barred from speaking about the confidential meetings. DA and opposition councillors‚ speaking on condition of anonymity‚ accused De Lille and those aligned to her of taking action against anyone found to challenge Ebrahim and Whitehead. Tuesday's meeting comes amid rifts within the ruling DA‚ which culminated in a public spat between De Lille and safety and security Mayco member JP Smith.

Following the spat‚ the DA created a sub-committee‚ headed by parliamentary chief whip John Steenhuisen‚ to deal with the matter.