Five years before the DA sanctioned Cape Town councillor Abdulkader Elyas for lying about being a medical doctor, he was claiming an extraordinary side career as an in-demand speaker for big corporates and international foundations while still a University of Cape Town (UCT) student.
Emails sent by Elyas obtained by Daily Maverick from his 2018/2019 stint on the UCT Student Representative Council (SRC) contain falsehoods about his professional affiliations and activities and suggest a pattern of using fabricated, impressive-sounding speaking events to justify his absence from SRC meetings.
One such talk, which Elyas claimed was scheduled for April 2019, was described as a “closed” event, allegedly worth $3,500 to the organisers, where Elyas was slated as delivering an insider’s briefing on “the kingmakers of the D********* *******E”: presumably the Democratic Alliance.
On Wednesday, Elyas declined to give Daily Maverick on-record comment.
The DA’s Federal Legal Commission (FLC) was meeting on Wednesday evening to consider the 31-year-old’s fate within the party after he reportedly failed to comply with a previous disciplinary agreement hammered out after News24 exposed the fact that he did not have qualifications in either medicine or actuarial science, contrary to his claims.
The DA federal council chair, Ashor Sarupen, told Daily Maverick he could not discuss internal disciplinary matters.
The 2019 SRC emails show Elyas repeatedly...
Five years before the DA sanctioned Cape Town councillor Abdulkader Elyas for lying about being a medical doctor, he was claiming an extraordinary side career as an in-demand speaker for big corpo...