'I'll turn Karoo into Dubai', says mayor Gayton McKenzie

Central Karoo district mayor Gayton McKenzie has promised to convert the “desert” into another Dubai.

On the streets of Beaufort West many hail the former prisoner and businessman — elected mayor in April after a coalition of his Patriotic Alliance (PA), the ANC and the Karoo Democratic Force — as a hero.

· R264,127.28: McKenzie’s salary, which he says he donates to charity

·R3m: The amount of money mayor Gayton McKenzie raised from private funders on behalf of Central Karoo District Municipality 

The man who promised to attract investors and deliver projects within 100 days took the Sunday Times on a highlights tour in Beaufort West, the seat of the district municipality that is home to 51,000 people and  also includes the  towns of Prince Albert, Laingsburg and  Murraysburg. 

He sold himself hard, driving around the spotless town showing off refurbished swimming pools and an industrial site he opened in a Transnet warehouse which he claimed would generate 500 jobs. 

“When I came here everything was broken. The people here had bucket toilets, and yet the DA is complaining about shoddy work. The reality is that nobody has a bucket in Central Karoo. Pools were not working for five years, today pools are in top condition,” he said.

“People didn’t have jobs. I started the few days of my first 100 days in Prince Albert. I have already given 70 people jobs in my first week. They are government jobs. I am going to build a pool here before I go. I am going to change people’s lives.”

McKenzie said flush toilets were a distant dream for residents of Newton, Leeu Gamka.

“Some of our people are 80-years-old and have never seen a flushing toilet. Now I brought flushing toilets and people want to criticise and say: 'Oh no, he is not doing a great job’. Why didn’t they do it?”

The municipality, he said, owed Eskom R65m when he took over. Now it owes R50m.

“Today there is a bakery. The bread is 25% cheaper. There was no tar [to repair roads]. We had to get tar from George. Today there are two tar plants in Beaufort West. There was no ready-mix cement, they had to get it from Oudtshoorn.

"Today there is a ready-mix in Beaufort West. There was no steel, today there is steel and a clothing factory. All that type of stuff I brought in a very short space of time. And that is who I am,” he said.

“I don’t take a salary. I don’t have a council vehicle. I don’t have bodyguards. I don’t claim anything from the state because this is a labour of love for me.”

“The people love me,” McKenzie says. “You [Sunday Times] people saw the backlash when you called me the Mampara of the Week. Check your website, you have never got a backlash like that.”

But one investor, who established the town's clothing factory, dismissed McKenzie's claims as a “scam”.

Shadreck Pita, who responded to McKenzie's Facebook request for investors, said this week he lost about R700,000 and was now stranded in Beaufort West. He claims to have been enticed with promises of a R3m personal protection equipment (PPE) tender and a contract on the mines which never materialised.

Pita, who ran a successful business in East London, claims McKenzie “gave” him a rundown Transnet building in which to set up a factory and he fixed it up.

“I brought all my equipment from East London to Beaufort West, which cost me a lot of money. We also moved all our house furniture to Beaufort West.”

McKenzie, he said, launched the business in June amid a flurry of publicity, and produced 100 people, told him to train them and pay them a monthly stipend of R500. He said he paid the trainees only for the days they attended the training. 

“I agreed to pay the stipend because we had the promise of the PPE tender,” he said.

“A few days after the 100 days [celebrations], we had a meeting with the mayor, and he said I must start marketing the business and make it a success. I was confused. My question was where is the tender that he promised us and the mine contracts? I was doing very well in East London but any business person always looks for greener pastures. But his one was darker pastures,” he said. 

Pita shut down the factory and vowed to remove all his improvements from the building.

McKenzie strongly denied scamming anyone. “Not one of the about 37 businesses have received a tender, yet their businesses are flourishing through proper sales, marketing and business processes.

“One day Mr Pita approached me and told me that he would not be able to afford salaries and that he wanted my assistance, which I was willing to give. I then offered him a loan agreement which he refused. That showed me that he had no intention of paying his people.”

 I am going to turn this into Dubai. We are going to mine uranium. We are going to extract the gas. We are going to produce energy in the Central Karoo and we are going to sell to every municipality in SA. We are going to become the biggest energy hub in SA

—  Central Karoo District Municipality mayor Gayton McKenzie

McKenzie said a Johannesburg-based investor was now ready to run the factory.

A few steps from the clothing factory, mechanic Willie Verdoes sings McKenzie’s praises.

“I owe my life to Mr McKenzie,” he said. “[He] gave me this building. For 15 years my equipment stood in my backyard and nobody could help me.

"When McKenzie came in, I went to him ... He brought me to this place and asked if I am happy. I said I am happy and he said: ‘This is yours’. You can’t believe it. I never thought he would help a white person and he said colour does not matter to him.”

Vincent Oliver, an aluminium window producer, agreed with Verdoes. Instead of expanding his business to Namibia, he opened in Beaufort West.

“I believe in Mr McKenzie’s vision ... From here, we are 450km to Cape Town and 450km to Port Elizabeth. Our vision is to start to supply other areas. This is one of our best moves,” he said.

Bakery owner Gerhard Hutton said they produce 6,000 loaves a day.

“The market has received me incredibly well, a little too well in fact as initially we could not keep up with the demand,” he said.

Sharna Fernandez, Western Cape MEC for social development and the DA constituency head for Prince Albert and Laingsburg, dismisses what happened in McKenzie's first 100 days as “smoke and mirrors”.

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“Of all the promises he made, one was to replace bucket toilets. He began a project to install toilets in a small hamlet just outside Leeu Gamka. The municipality wrote to tell him that they must cease until they had met all the requirements and they failed to do that.

“Sadly, the cisterns were installed incorrectly. The water flushed backwards and it caused a major sewage spill.”

But toilet recipient Martin Jacob described McKenzie as a gift from God.

“We have lived with the bucket toilets all our lives. The municipal truck came once a week and did not fully empty the buckets and they filled up again a few days later. For 48 years, I sat on that bucket with flies and everything. When the DA came to take pictures, the contractor was still busy with the project. We are very, very happy.”

Jacob's Newton Park neighbourhood is on Transnet land. The parastatal told the Sunday Times this week that the district municipality did not inform it when it installed the flush toilets in June. When Transnet raised the issue, the district municipality apologised, but only after the work was finished.

In a complaint to the public protector and the National Treasury, the SA Communist Party accused McKenzie of failing to transfer R3m raised from donors into a municipal account.

“The funds, which were never declared to the municipality and not paid in the primary account of the municipality, as required ... were meant for an already funded bucket eradication project and not consulted with the municipalities of Beaufort West, Laingsburg and Prince Albert. The mayor had on numerous occasions on his Live Facebook posts, Twitter and mainstream print and visual media admitted and declared that he raised these funds for the said bucket eradication agenda, which we can prove was never authorised by the local municipalities within the Central Karoo,” the complaint reads.

Public protector spokesperson Oupa Segalwe confirmed the complaint was being investigated.

The Treasury said it referred the complaint to the Western Cape provincial treasury.

McKenzie hit back at the SACP, saying the allegations were “ludicrous”.

“I don’t take a salary, and as such the SACP are embarrassed. I am a capitalist and my acts of service to the people of the municipality are more communist than the acts which are put forward by a party purporting to be communist.”