The DA has laid criminal charges against Beaufort West Mayor Truman Prince and has asked Public Protector Thuli Madonsela to investigate his alleged abuse of office.

The party’s constituency head in Beaufort West, Sharna Fernandez, laid a criminal charge on Thursday in the Central Karoo town, national spokesperson Phumzile Van Damme said in a statement.

Van Damme also wrote to Madonsela.

The DA has accused Prince of blatant corruption for writing a letter to the board chairperson of the Construction Education Training Authority (CETA), asking that he meet with a certain contractor.

“We are an ANC-led municipality, we are therefore in need of financial injection for our 2016 local government election campaign and therefore will also want to see construction companies sympathetic and having a relationship with the ANC to benefit, in order for these companies to inject funds in our election campaign process,” he wrote in the letter.

Prince said he wrote the letter because he believed economic transformation in the central Karoo needed to be accelerated and he wanted to make sure the poorest of the poor got an opportunity to go into business.

Van Damme claimed it was because of corruption that service delivery had been poor in ANC-run municipalities

“Money intended for service delivery is re-directed into the pockets of comrades, and tenders given to companies that neither have the skills or resources required for the task at hand.

“To date, the ANC has neither publicly commented, nor condemned, Mr Prince’s actions. It can therefore be assumed that this sort of behaviour is widely accepted in the ANC,” she said.

ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe on Wednesday said Prince could not be “reckless” on behalf of the ANC.

“The ANC has no tender in Beaufort West and the ANC has not sent a message to all its mayors to say give tenders to [those] who will fund the ANC. There is no such thing,” he said.

Mantashe said the ANC would follow up on the issue. News24