Ekurhuleni Metro Police

Parties pushing it with election posters

The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality has called on political parties within the region to ensure that their election posters are taken down with immediate effect.

The call comes as officials from the municipality's Outdoor Adverting section continue with the work of removing posters that were put up during the run up to the recent local government elections.

In a media statement issued by the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Department Of Communications And Marketing today (Tuesday), Municipal Spokesperson Zweli Dlamini explained that: "It is to date 20 days since the local government elections took place and political posters that are still up have exceeded their 10 days post-election removal deadline as per municipal by-laws. This constitutes illegal advertising."

Dlamini points out that according to Ekurhuleni's Police Service By-laws, political parties had 10 days after the date of the elections to remove their posters. He says: "Failure to do so has resulted in Council removing the posters at the promulgated tariff of R27, 00 per poster which cost will be recovered from the applicable organization or political party."

According to the statement, political parties within council have to demonstrate that they respect the laws of the land by adhering to the by-laws that they collectively passed. Any undermining of these laws will unfortunately have undesirable effects in the long run as it will give an impression that these ordinances are not to be taken seriously.

Already the municipality's Outdoor Adverting section has removed piles and piles of posters from various political parties in Ekurhuleni and invoices will soon be forwarded to the relevant political parties.

A week after the recent local government elections held on May 18, 2011 the Johannesburg metro police reported that the political parties had one week to remove all their posters. In failing to do so the parties would be fined R200 each for a poster on a lamp-pole and R1000 each for larger posters if they were not removed.

Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said: "If parties fail to remove the posters [within the week] then the [Johannesburg Metro police department] will go out in full force."

Under the City Of Johannesburg by-law, political parties have 20 days to remove their election posters, put up on walls, street poles and other places around the city which gives them until mid-June, or they will be fined by the City for each poster left up.

Case Law: Citizen 1978 Ltd v McBride – South African ...

Some background is necessary.  In 1986, McBride, as an operative of the African National Congress’s armed wing, detonated a car bomb outside Magoo’s Bar and the Why Not Restaurant in Durban, in which 69 people were injured and three women killed. He was sentenced to death, but was reprieved and released in the early ’90s.

Fast-forward to September 2003, when McBride was a candidate for the position of chief of Ekurhuleni’s metro police.

The Citizen was opposed to McBride’s appointment, and didn’t mince its words in a number of articles and editorials. The paper regarded McBride as “blatantly unsuited” for the position, “unless his backers support the dubious philosophy: get a criminal to catch a criminal”. Reference was made to the “cold-blooded multiple murders which he committed in the Magoo’s Bar bombing”, and his “dubious flirtation with alleged gun dealers in Mozambique”. When McBride threatened to sue the paper, it responded with a headline: “Bomber McBride to sue The Citizen.” He was labelled by the paper as one of the “three most notorious non-governmental killers of the late-apartheid period”; “a wicked coward”; “evil” and “human scum”.

McBride sued for defamation, arguing that the statements meant he was a murderer and a criminal, and was involved in illegal activities with gun dealers in Mozambique.

The Citizen raised the defence of fair comment, arguing that the statements concerned a matter of public interest: McBride’s suitability for the job of police chief. But to succeed with that defence, The Citizen had to show that the facts upon which the opinion was based were true. This essentially meant proving that McBride was a murderer.

The problem facing the newspaper was that in 2001 McBride had been granted amnesty under the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act – and a provision in the act stated that, once amnesty had been granted, a person’s “ conviction shall for all purposes … be deemed not to have taken place “.