Nelson Mandela Bay councillors suspend Deputy Mayor Gary van Niekerk pending criminal trial

Nelson Mandela Bay Deputy Mayor Gary van Niekerk in court on 12 December 2024. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)

16 Dec 2024

Nelson Mandela Bay’s deputy mayor, Gary van Niekerk, was suspended from his job on Thursday after a heated council meeting. Van Niekerk, whose party, the National Alliance, only holds three seats in council, had been able to negotiate the job of speaker and mayor for himself since local government elections in 2021. Now he has been criminally charged with fraud for allegedly using council funds to pay for his own lawyer.

After a heated debate that included legal threats if a motion of no confidence was not tabled, 56 councillors voted for the suspension of Nelson Mandela Bay Deputy Mayor Gary Van Niekerk and 48 voted for him to be dismissed from council. The motion was tabled by the Democratic Alliance’s Morne Steyn on Thursday, 12 December 2024.

Van Niekerk briefly appeared in court on Thursday morning and was charged with fraud relating to the alleged misuse of municipal funds to hire an attorney for himself.

Read more: Deputy Mayor Gary van Niekerk charged with fraud over alleged misuse of municipal funds

Van Niekerk, whose National Alliance party is one of the smaller parties in a coalition with the governing ANC in the metro, on Thursday morning still said he had not been asked to step aside by the mayor.

He arrived at the council meeting after an outfit change, switching from a blue suit he wore for court to a dark grey suit with a red tie.

Van Niekerk was summoned by the Hawks to appear in court on a charge of fraud, and stands accused of fraudulently obtaining legal representation using council funding after he was removed from his seat and was about to lose his job as speaker due to internal party squabbles.

The charges relate to an incident in May 2022, when Van Niekerk was the speaker of the highly unstable Nelson Mandela Bay council. At the time, current speaker Eugene Johnson was the mayor.

Nelson Mandela Bay Deputy Mayor Gary van Niekerk in court on 12 December 2024. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)

It is alleged that Van Niekerk had received legal services worth R551,586, provided on the basis that the municipality would pay for it. The legal representatives chosen by Van Niekerk were not on the municipality’s panel of attorneys.

Suspended city manager Noxolo Nqwazi, who also has been criminally charged in unrelated matters and is currently on trial, had declared Van Niekerk’s seat vacant after she received a letter from his party, then known as the Northern Alliance, saying he was no longer a member.

This was later overturned by a court order, but Van Niekerk was accused of using a council letterhead to obtain the legal services of an attorney — even though he was no longer the speaker at the time.

He has admitted to writing the letter, saying that he was acting “in defence of the Office of the Speaker”, but an internal investigation by councillors found that he wrote the letter after his seat had already been declared vacant and he had lost his job as speaker.

Read more: DA calls for Nelson Mandela Bay mayor to face disciplinary action while metro ructions continue

Found guilty

He was found guilty by an internal council disciplinary committee. According to their report, he misrepresented himself to the attorneys as a councillor and speaker of the council, even though his seat had been declared vacant.

Van Niekerk briefly appeared in court on Thursday and has been charged with two counts of fraud and two counts of contravening Section 173 of the Municipal Finance Management Act.

On Friday, during a press conference, Nelson Mandela Bay Mayor Babalwa Lobishe, who controversially “switched positions” with Van Niekerk in October, said they were waiting to hear from “the minister” before they appoint a deputy mayor.

Van Niekerk is due back in court on 15 January 2025. DM

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Found guilty