Cape Town's mayor, the latest casualty of a series of sex and corruption scandals that threaten to bury the two leading parties competing for South Africa's minority white and mixed-race vote, yesterday relinquished his ceremonial duties but continued to cling to political office.
Gerald...
Cape Town's mayor, the latest casualty of a series of sex and corruption scandals that threaten to bury the two leading parties competing for South Africa's minority white and mixed-race vote, yesterday relinquished his ceremonial duties but continued to cling to political office.
Gerald Morkel, a key leader of the Democratic Alliance party, stopped short of resigning outright following accusations by a high profile German fugitive accused of massive fraud that he gave the mayor tens of thousands of pounds in illicit payments.
Mr Morkel's attempt to avoid political oblivion follows the resignation of the premier of Western Cape province on Friday, amid a police investigation into gross sexual harassment. Peter Marais, the highest ranking public official in the New National party (NNP), which gave South Africa apartheid and has reinvented itself as a mostly "coloured" or mixed-race organisation, was Mr Morkel's main political rival in the region.
The scandals have spread far beyond the individuals involved to tar the leaderships of both parties with charges of cover-ups and hypocrisy.
President Thabo Mbeki's African National Congress is poised to take advantage in the days ahead with the introduction of a new law allowing elected officials to swap parties.
The Democratic Alliance, the official opposition in parliament, is fighting off accusations of corruption after Jürgen Harksen, a German businessman resisting extradition to his homeland for allegedly stealing tens of millions of pounds, told an official commission that he paid more than 1m rand (£72,000) to Mr Morkel for his party's coffers and his personal use. The money included more than £10,000 allegedly used to build a garage and pay five months' rent on a plush home.
The revelations have been very damaging to the party, which ran a racially tainted election campaign two years ago focused on alleged corruption in the ANC government.
The Democratic Alliance's leader, Tony Leon, has attempted to defend Mr Morkel while ordering an audit of the mayor's bank account and those of other officials implicated by Mr Harksen.
But disillusionment was evident last week as the Democratic Alliance's deputy leader in the Western Cape, Hennie Bester, resigned, saying he was sickened by the politics of the province.
To add to the party's woes, South Africa's elite anti-crime unit, the Scorpions, has launched an investigation into allegations of money-laundering, fraud and corruption by Western Cape politicians.
Meanwhile, the director of public prosecutions yesterday ordered a criminal investigation into the latest accusations of sexual harassment against Mr Marais, this time by a former worker in his office.
When he resigned on Friday, the former premier welcomed a police investigation into an earlier charge of sexual misconduct made by one of his party colleagues. "It gives me a chance once and for all to prove my innocence," he said.
Until the end of last year, the two accused men were members of the same political alliance against the ANC, with Mr Morkel serving as provincial premier and Mr Marais as Cape Town mayor. But the alliance split and the NNP realigned itself with the ANC. In the ensuing power struggle, the two men swapped jobs and became rivals.
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