Price of pride mounts for municipality

EKURHULENI Metro's refusal to say sorry to a councillor has led to a bill of more than R1-million.

This week, the High Court in Johannesburg ordered the metro - the local authority for areas such as Brakpan, Edenvale and Boksburg - to pay the legal costs of councillor Izak Berg after a five-year legal battle.

The saga began in 2008 when Berg demanded a written apology after the then municipal manager, Patrick Flusk, told city officials in a meeting that Berg was corrupt and would be jailed. Flusk and the municipality refused to apologise, leading to Berg winning R50000 in damages after going to court.

The metro decided to appeal the lower court's judgment - but the move blew up in their faces. Now the municipality has to foot the bill for Berg's legal costs, which are just more than R500000, the R50000 in damages and its own legal costs of more than R500000.

"We have taken note of the court's ruling on this matter and are currently studying the judgment so as to determine a way forward," said Ekurhuleni spokesman Sam Modiba.

In a 22-page judgment, the high court ruled that "the defendants failed to offer an apology for the first defendant's conduct but persisted in a denial of uttering the defamatory words."

The judgment also said: "The statement of and concerning the plaintiff was not made in a political arena ... there was no evidence to show that the plaintiff and the first defendant were political opponents.''

Berg said he was preparing to lay a complaint with the public protector and report the "wasteful expenditure" to the auditor-general.

"Is this how the metro values ratepayers' monies?" he said.

Berg, chairman of the Independent Ratepayers' Association of South Africa, said he was going to ask the public protector to investigate how much Flusk contributed to the legal costs of the case.

"According to the policy, he was only entitled to help of R10000," Berg said.

Berg showed the Sunday Times documents that detail a request by the provincial government for an out-of-court settlement.

This was overruled by a senior official at the municipality, who said that "the municipality is proceeding to defend the matter".

Berg said that although the victory was sweet, he was more concerned about the wasteful expenditure.

"I will also request that the officials who briefed the mayor and city manager on this case when we wanted to settle be held responsible for all the costs," said Berg.