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Adams states her case

2003-06-04 16:44

Cape Town - The first day of cross-examination in the civil case involving two Western Cape politicians was a fairly low-key affair Wednesday, with most of the post-lunch proceedings spent dealing with the allocation of money to a bakery project in Leeuw-Gamka near Beaufort West.

This project is one of five listed by former Western Cape MEC Freda Adams as having been allocated monies irregularly or without the necessary checks and balances.

Adams is suing Peter Marais, now leader of the New Labour Party, and Gerald Morkel. Morkel and Marais are former premiers of the Western Cape and former mayors of Cape Town.

Marais faces two defamation claims - one for R125 000 and the other for R1m - and a R1.2m claim for sexual harassment. Morkel is facing a defamation claim of R500 000. Marais has lodged a counter-claim of R2.5m for defamation.

Marais' advocate, Anwar Albertus SC, wanted to know from Adams whether she had investigated the history behind the non-existent bakery, despite money amounting to approximately R200 000 being allocated for the poverty alleviation project.

Adams had submitted an affidavit to the Public Protector using the five projects as examples of what she thought was maladministration and corruption in the provincial legislature.

Asked why there had been no follow-up when she saw expensive bakery equipment rusting in a roofless, semi-detached structure, Adams said: "I expected that (when) asking responsible people... and believed the equipment would be removed."

Adams said she had depended on the integrity of others, including a Mr Vos, the chair of the Leeuw-Gamka community forum, a Hannes Botes and town mayor Leticia Solomons, all of whom were upset that the bakery was not up and running as planned.

In a lighter moment, there was tittering in the court when Albertus submitted that the reason for the equipment being where they were was because the walls and roof had to be removed in order to fit all the bakery equipment inside.

Earlier, Adams caused a stir when she said that a possible reason why a confidante of Marais, Colin du Sart - then responsible for the management of the poverty relief desk - did not hand over files relating to the five suspect projects was because "Du Sart felt I (Adams) would come across more corruption".

According to Albertus, Du Sart will say that the reason why he did not hand over the files was because he had given them to the then Social Services MEC Pierre Uys who had the line responsibility for them.

- SAPA

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