Statement by Ald Cilliers Brink – DA Tshwane Mayoral Candidate:
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has formally instructed our legal team to appoint a professional tracing agent to locate Edwin Sodi and to submit his details directly to the City of Tshwane and National Treasury.
The ANC-led coalition governing Tshwane has now run out of excuses for why a completed application to blacklist Sodi and his associates has not been submitted to National Treasury. Despite repeated assurances and ample opportunity, the coalition has failed to act decisively.
If successful, the blacklisting application would prevent Sodi and Blackhead Consulting from doing business with the state – a necessary step to protect communities such as Hammanskraal from further harm.
Edwin Sodi is a high-profile, corruption-accused businessman whose companies benefited from lucrative state contracts and whose name featured prominently before the Zondo Commission. The City of Tshwane has long had sufficient grounds to proceed with blacklisting and could have taken reasonable steps to ensure the process was finalised.
A recent Sunday Times report revealed that the City claims it has been unable to locate Sodi. According to the Mayor’s spokesperson, Mayor Nasiphi Moya appears indifferent to this failure. Yet the same report demonstrated that a journalist was able to locate Sodi with a single WhatsApp message.
These explanations increasingly resemble deliberate obstruction. The City could have instructed a tracing agent, published a notice in the media, or proceeded with lawful service in Sodi’s absence. Instead, delay after delay has served only to protect Sodi and the ANC’s patronage networks.
Blacklisting Sodi is not optional. It is essential to accountability for the people of Hammanskraal. This is precisely why the DA-led coalition in Tshwane initiated the blacklisting process in 2023.
However, since ActionSA handed control of the City to the ANC in 2024, the blacklisting process has stalled.
In May 2025, the DA received written confirmation from the Tshwane City Manager that the blacklisting process was well advanced. By September 2025, the City was offering excuses to a parliamentary committee as to why the application had still not been submitted to National Treasury.
The ANC-led coalition governing Tshwane has now run out of excuses for why a completed application to blacklist Sodi and his associates has not been submitted to National Treasury. Despite repeated assurances and ample opportunity, the coalition has failed to act decisively.
To break this deadlock, the DA will act decisively. We have instructed a tracing agent to locate Sodi and will submit the relevant information to both Tshwane and National Treasury. We will also insist that the City publish the blacklisting notice publicly to uphold transparency and due process.
The DA remains resolute in defending accountability, protecting communities, and rooting out corruption wherever it occurs. We will not allow personal interests or political alliances to be placed above justice for the people of Tshwane.
Impulsive Flower
Fun South African Fact: South Africa is home to the highest commercial bungi jump in the world at 710 feet.
Black Walnut
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.