van Schalkwyk vindicated in DA Swellendam corruption probe

Last week, Nexus Forensic Services delivered the full forensic report commissioned earlier in the year. They have shown it to News24 but not released it to the public. However, it has confirmed the suspicions directed at the eight tenders flagged by the Vermaak Report earlier this year.

It confirmed and expanded on the findings in a previously released report commissioned by the former Speaker of Swellendam Council, Juan van Schalkwyk, known as the Vermaak report. Vermaak found prima facie evidence of fraud, forgery, identity misrepresentation, rigged scoring, exclusion of legitimate bidders through manipulated scope reductions, some intimidation, and millions in irregular payments to unappointed providers. This affected eight tenders.

I met Juan van Schalkwyk during a brief period in which I joined the VF+, in the hope of convincing the leadership to take a more proactive stance on self-determination. He was always the person with the most energy and enthusiasm in the room, and while he sometimes seemed to have a brittle temperament, there was a tough centre to him.

Van Schalkwyk was elected to Swellendam Municipal Council in the 2021 local government elections as the Freedom Front’s only councillor.

Initially, the DA held a slim majority with six of the eleven seats, allowing them full control. However, internal DA conflicts led to the ousting of three members: Deputy Mayor Michael Pokwas, Speaker Bongani Sonqwenqwe, and Gcobisa Mangcu-Qotyiwe. They were removed in a process led by Helen Zille for voting against a caucus decision to appoint Annalene Vorster to the Municipal Manager’s office, and had their DA membership revoked.

This triggered a by-election in Barrydale’s Ward 2, where the DA’s candidate, Beate Joubert, lost to Ikey Ferguson of the ANC and Brandon Festus of the Patriotic Alliance. The loss eroded the DA’s majority, creating a hung council and turning van Schalkwyk’s seat into the key to maintaining control, so the DA entered a coalition. Under this deal, van Schalkwyk was selected as Speaker.

From day one, van Schalkwyk refused to play the obedient junior partner. He openly opposed performance bonuses for senior managers while residents were battling post-Covid hardship, challenged wasteful expenditure, and clashed repeatedly with du Rand. One of the more irritating issues for the DA was the selection of the chair of the financial oversight committee, which is traditionally a member of the opposition. The DA objected strongly to the idea of an ANC member overseeing their conduct and accused van Schalkwyk of collusion for upholding basic norms of accountability.

In October 2024, whistle-blowers handed van Schalkwyk documentary proof of systemic tender manipulation. Using his powers as Speaker and with ANC support, he placed Municipal Manager Anneleen Vorster on precautionary suspension so that an independent forensic investigation could proceed without interference. Vorster immediately took the matter to the Western Cape High Court, and on 22 November 2024 Judge Hayley Slingers ruled the suspension procedurally unlawful, ordering van Schalkwyk personally, together with the council and municipality, to pay Vorster’s legal costs. Nearly R1 million would be carried by ratepayers. The DA and du Rand celebrated the ruling as proof that the suspension was illegal political theatre. Van Schalkwyk has always insisted the procedural flaw was minor and that the court never touched the substance of the allegations.

At the time this seemed like sour grapes, a means of clinging to a shred of dignity. But it has since been borne out by both forensic reports his tenure made possible.

The investigation van Schalkwyk forced through was first assigned to Advocate Etienne Vermaak on 30 October 2024. It began with three tenders but was expanded to eight, worth more than R40 million in total. There were two reports: the first dealing with supply-chain corruption, and the second dealing with a significant bribe allegedly offered to an ANC councillor to step down and cross over to the DA to free up a seat for the DA to govern alone. That allegation became a case of one word against another, as no tangible evidence beyond accusations and counter-accusations materialised.

The Vermaak preliminary report, dated 1 December 2024 and published on 12 February 2025, found systemic corruption stretching back at least seven years. It detailed unexplained score adjustments, disqualification of legitimate black-owned and local firms, payments to unappointed service providers, scope reductions to favour specific bidders, and alleged that municipal consultant Francois Ryke rigged processes to benefit his son Jacques Ryke’s company, Umzali Civils, by awarding false locality points to the Cape Town-based firm and concealing Jacques’ involvement through forged identities, including signing compulsory briefing sessions under false names.

The report recommended disciplinary action against Vorster and stated that criminal charges should be considered.

When Vorster wrote to councillors on 3 February 2025 warning that releasing the report would expose the municipality to massive libel claims and violated its own Anti-Corruption Policy, which implies that the public has no right to know about corruption, she cited the policy’s confidentiality clause.

Van Schalkwyk sided with the ANC to force immediate publication. Four days earlier, he delivered the decisive sixth vote in the motion of no confidence that removed Francois du Rand as mayor, explicitly citing du Rand’s refusal to act on the corruption evidence then emerging.

The VF+ federal leadership, led at the time by Pieter Groenewald, bypassed the provincial leadership and issued van Schalkwyk a direct order: vote to reinstate du Rand at the next council meeting on 3 February 2025 or be expelled. He refused. At the start of that very meeting, he resigned as Speaker, as councillor, and from the VF+ entirely, declaring on the council floor that his personal integrity and the interests of Swellendam residents were “not for sale or negotiation in political horse-trading”.

His resignation deadlocked the mayoral election at 5–5 and left the municipality without a mayor or speaker for almost two weeks, until a new VF+ councillor, Jasper du Toit Laubsher, was sworn in and voted with the DA to restore du Rand on 14 February 2025.

As of the time of writing, Anneleen Vorster remains Municipal Manager, Francois Ryke remains an active municipal consultant, Jacques Ryke and Umzali Civils have faced no contract cancellations, and Francois du Rand remains Executive Mayor. The municipality’s only public response has been a short media statement promising “due process” while taking no visible steps against any implicated party and denying any wrongdoing, despite the preliminary report already showing sufficient evidence of misconduct.

Juan van Schalkwyk, now a private citizen carrying personal financial liability for hundreds of thousands of rand in court costs and having lost his political career and party membership, remains the one individual whose stubborn refusal to compromise forced Swellendam’s deeply entrenched procurement corruption into the open.

In every municipality where the DA governs, it is virulently hostile to any form of accountability. Every person found to have been involved in wrongdoing has been promoted to Parliament or transferred, unless they were arrested before a quiet exit could be arranged, as in the case of Malusi Booi.

Part of the problem is that municipal governance allows members under pending investigation to resign, allows affected parties to vote on investigation processes affecting them, and creates no binding obligation to pursue criminal charges.

The DA, much like the ANC, albeit not to the same extent, has a profound accountability problem, which cannot be resolved until it admits it.