GOOD Statement by Keagen Gertse, GOOD Drakenstein Councillor & Caucus Chairperson:
The GOOD Party in Drakenstein Municipality has written to the Speaker of Council, Alderman Koos Le Roux, raising concerns about ward project allocations, specifically an allocation in ward 14 where ward councillor Brenda van Willingh allegedly spent R20,000 on t-shirts for 10 ward committee members. In addition, many wards in Drakenstein allocated R5,000 towards ward committees for stationery.
The Municipal Structures Act, 1998, places the responsibility on the Municipality to budget for out-of-pocket expenses relating to the optimal functioning of ward committees. However, considering that these individuals do not occupy offices, GOOD wishes to see receipts for this spent and requests answers on how and when such stationery was procured and used.
In terms of the ward projections and the 2024/2025 ward allocations, spending R20 000.00 on t-shirts for 10 ward committee members is unjustifiable. GOOD believes that no directive exists which gives ward councillors the right to even consider procuring items of clothing for committee members to be identified and ultimately function within their respective positions.
What further fuels GOOD’s discomfort is that on 26 November 2025, General Council Sitting, GOOD voted against the Ward Projects Policy, as we believe the policy in its current form disallows the council to scrutinise ward funds that were used in previous financial years and bars the council from holding organisations accountable that handled these funds.
GOOD questioned the R20,000 worth of T-shirts to the Community Services Portfolio Committee. We were subsequently informed that we need to wait for the Audited Financial Statements of the organisation, in this instance Miqlat, to further probe these concerns. Considering that the Audited Statements will not be due for at least another six-plus months, and as was confirmed in Council, this limits our ability to question this expenditure in real-time.
We simply cannot accept this spending in its current form and, not probe, scrutinise, or vie for accountability.
We need urgent answers to this exorbitant spending as the money could have been used elsewhere to have a more meaningful impact on communities across various sectors, such as sports, arts and culture, development, safety and security. R20,000 for T-shirts simply does not make the cut on a ward priority list and should not have been part of the ward allocations in the first place.
GOOD will not rest until we have a breakdown of how these monies were spent, the amounts paid to service providers, outside of Miqlat, NFC and other organisations that benefit, largely from ward allocations, at the expense of other community organisations who already operate on the ward level and are better positioned to serve their communities.
GOOD has called on Drakenstein before to empower ward-based NGOs and NPOs and not to enforce a one-size-fits-all model where outside actors come in and scoop up the biggest pieces of the pie. This position disenfranchises the very people it is meant to help and develop.
GOOD Sports and Recreation: GOOD supports sports and recreational activities for youth engagement.
VenusXX
Oscar Pistorius. Not the first South African with a race problem.
Highlander Monk
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.