Dear Democratic Alliance Mayor of Knysna, Eleanore Bouw-Spies.

A communications manager who was the DA election campaigner, particularly yours, gets an untendered contract for R105,000 in your first month in office.

Although no position exists on the required organogram, you then make the ex-Communications Manager your assistant at the same big salary (ironically, by law he remains the Communication’s Manager).

Why didn’t you do this through Council? This action was obviously in play when the previous Council meeting was held. And another is likely to be held this month.

For all of you to shunt the blame onto suspended and unavailable Municipal Manager Grant Easton is too convenient and ludicrous. And entirely untruthful since the contract hadn’t been signed when you met me, it having been hastily sent to a cellphone before out meeting.

WHY WOULD YOU COST THE TAXPAYER R105,000?

Any reasonable person would question that.

In the recording of our meeting that started this, I was obviously not receiving answers – https://soundcloud.com/loveknysna/meeting-eleonore-bouw-spies-fran-kirsten-with-mike-hampton. It should be impossible for the Mayor, the Legal Adviser, the Acting Municipal Manager and the “Communications Manager” to not be able to answer my questions there and then. Consequently, I ask if it was deliberate?

So I waited for the promised emailed answer from a junior legal adviser who seemed to be forced to carry your baggage. Those emails were exactly like that meeting, a runaround.

Why will no one supply me the exact law that supports your position? If you had, surely we wouldn’t be in this mess?

Instead, you attack, releasing a defamatory press release that misrepresents the situation.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?

Is it because of this question?  Or the others I’m asking regards a possibly illegally appointed director, the forensic report on your husband/partner, my submission to Parliament, DA threats and propaganda etc.?

No one who listened to the recording of our meeting could ever say I was unreasonable or unfair. Yet you’re trying to make out that my pursuit of truth and the whole story is unreasonable.

Any reasonable person, not the unbiased lot that is screaming so much on Knysna Municipality’s Facebook, would question your motive.

Why do the Knysna Municipality and DA associate with the people who’ve been previously and hectically involved in the propaganda against me, some associating me with a missing child and being a danger to children? Why aren’t you criticising such dirty meanness but instead criticising me? Again, seemingly too convenient.

APOLOGISE… AND BE OUR MAYOR

Make an effort. Backpedal into decency. Give what you promised: COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPARENCY.

And accept my offer of a public meeting wherein all issues can be addressed. Surely that’s the best way to put so many scandals to bed and give the public you serve a good night’s rest?

What kind of Mayor do you choose to be?

Read the follow-ups:

‘MAYOR, WHAT JUST HAPPENED???’

‘The Mayor, Fran Kirsten & the Communications Contract’

‘Emails: Melony Paulsen, Knysna Municipality Legal Adviser’

‘Democratic Alliance Uses Child Abuse as Propaganda Weapon’

Correction 11am: Note that the 3-month contract figure is R105,000. I originally put an extra nought instead of a comma in the first section (was correct in the header).