Johannesburg – The Democratic Alliance in KwaZulu-Natal says it has written a letter to the Auditor General for Royal AM’s alleged irregular sponsorship from eThekwini Municipality.
According to the opposition party, the municipality made an excessive reward of R16 million to Royal AM as a ‘sponsorship token’ in what the DA says ‘reeks of wasteful expenditure’ for the municipality to allocate money to a football club.
“The municipality is far in excess of any other established eThekwini club in the PSL and reeks of wasteful expenditure when so many people in the city have no access to housing, sanitation and electricity,” DA’s KZN regional chairperson Dean Macpherson said.
The city is famously known for pumping millions of rand to Premier Soccer League (PSL) clubs, while service delivery in various parts of the province is facing stagnation.
In 2018, the municipality signed a Memorandum of Understanding with its provincial-based PSL clubs, where they sealed a multi-million rand partnership and sponsorship deal.
DA’s letter to the Auditor General’s office pleads for serious intervention, for the auditors to investigate if the municipality followed appropriate procedure when funding Shauwn Mkhize’s club.
“The cold facts are that Mkhize is hardly short of money, she is a billionaire who recently bought a R16 million Rolls Royce for herself and she was able to stump up R50 million to buy the reincarnated version of Royal AM.
“She doesn’t need this money from eThekwini and should publicly reject the sponsorship in favour of football development in the city.
eThekwini residents should be not be burdened with indulging Mkhize’s fantasy league ambitions at the expense of the next generation of football stars,” a letter from the DA read.
The party argues strongly that MaMkhize does not deserve a municipal sponsorship deal, as she is hailed as a billionaire.
“It also begs the question as to why so much money is spent on one football club when we could be spending this money on development football in the city?”, the party further questioned.
Sunday World reached out to municipal officials with no availability to respond to the alleged claims made by the opposition party.
However, through in-depth investigations, it is alleged that the municipality pumped over millions to three Durban clubs, namely, Royal AM, Golden Arrows and AmaZulu.
MaMkhize’s side was rewarded heavily compared to the other home-based clubs.
While reaching out to Royal AM’s executive, Shauwn Mkhize and Sinky Mnisi, they both denied to either agree or disagree to the refuted claims regarding the sponsorship deal.
When the club’s chairman MaMkhize was approached for comment, she threw her toys out of the cot and said, “You journalists are a nuisance.”
Royal AM’s CEO Sinky Mnisi referred all queries to the municipality: “I have no comment in anything to do with all this, please ask the municipality, it’s the DA that wrote the letter to the auditors, this is a political fight, not us.”
Moreover, the DA’s Macpherson said the party in their letter, have also added a recent incident of money-splashing to Royal AM’s players when MaMkhize and her son Andile Mpisane dished out wads of money.
Macpherson said the letter probe if the money is declared to South African Revenue Service (SARS).
Royal AM faces more backslashes as PSL impose punishment
Following Royal AM’s disturbing money flash scandal, the PSL has punished the club for their on-field incident.
The PSL’s prosecutor Nande Becker said the SA’s top-flight competitive league has found more offences committed by the club on the day.
“We are charging the club for allowing an invasion of the demarcated area after the match. Only the people on the team sheets and on the bench are allowed on the pitch,” addressed Becker.
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