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In May 2019, Zandile Gumede and several co-accused appeared in the dock of the Durban Commercial Crimes Court. Over many months, several arrests and numerous court appearances later, the charges have grown to almost half a billion rand.

Today, we will unpack just what the eThekwini Municipality has and has not done within the ambit of its control.

Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda was quick to sing his own praises last week concerning corruption. He claimed that the municipality was being cleaned up under his stewardship and that the rot was being rooted out.

Whilst that may or may not be true in certain departments, it is practically impossible to tell. The process of tracking and implementing City Integrity and Investigation Unit reports is completely opaque. All councillors, the media and members of the public can access are columns of numbers of cases.

Since 2019, when the new city leadership was inaugurated, our stance as the DA has been clear- there needs to be able to track the process. Without a description of what the matter deals with when the complaint was laid, who was responsible for actioning it and an anonymized publication of the finding- some of which is supposed to be happening already- the system remains completely inaccessible.

The ANC are quick to bemoan the fact that as the DA, we often have copies of forensic reports that they don’t have and know details about matters that they don’t.

The reality is that this is the system of their design and one Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda has stubbornly refused to change. There is no transparency, there is little accountability, and the only way things come to light is if the media or the opposition happen upon them.

There are three categories of role players in this matter: the municipal officials, the politicians and the contractors. Some of the accused are family members.

From the outset, the ANC leadership and administrative leadership in the city have been quick to lay the responsibility for action at the door of law enforcement. “We will await the outcome of the trial” is a common phrase heard at City Hall.

The reality is that municipalities have strict legal obligations, encoded across numerous acts, to act against fraud and corruption and even to recover funds where possible. There are numerous internal processes which can and should be investigated against officials implicated in or even suspected of maladministration.

Having read- in various parts- the documents that led to the arrest and charges of the various role-players I can confirm the following:

• The investigative reports into the entire DSW saga were initiated and commissioned by the eThekwini Municipality. Put simply, it was not the Hawks or SAPS who started this process but the municipality itself.
• CIIU initiated the process and appointed a service provider to complete the investigations.
• A municipal official from CIIU is the primary complainant in the matter, and this is how it was taken up with the Hawks.
• The reports make definitive findings of wrongdoing against two key officials, councillors and service providers. It is not open-ended or inconclusive and provides ample opportunity to charge and dismiss those within the employ of the municipality.

Let us drill down into the various categories.

The contractors

The reports make damning findings against the contractors who were arrested alongside Gumede and others. One submitted a bid before the tender process even opened, one received a personalized email inviting him to bid despite never having been registered on the municipal database and so on. There is definitive proof that two contractors and a third party colluded to buy a municipal official’s wife an R1 million Jaguar.

The original investigative report also speaks to companies ‘controlled by’ XXX, and not just companies they are directors of. Effectively, it seems a small group of very powerful people captured the eThekwini tender system using various companies listed in the names of family members or others, but ultimately under their control.

The role of the eThekwini Blacklisting Committee deserves some attention here. One of the companies in particular- Uhlanga Trading Enterprise- had come to my attention because of the high volume of contracts it was awarded across several different departments that didn’t seem to add up.

It was also one of the companies involved in the chemical toilets scandal, where municipal official Sbu Vilane was given a ten-day unpaid suspension for wasting R36 million.

When I enquired, in April of 2018, I was told that Uhlanga was blacklisted in May 2018 but that that blacklisting was eventually overturned.

Uhlanga’s director- although I am told he has since resigned from the company- Hlenga Sibisi, was one of the initial service providers arrested with Gumede in 2019.

Despite this, it appears that Uhlanga (and potentially the other three companies involved) were never blacklisted.

A few months ago, I discovered that Uhlanga had been awarded an R16,9 million tender for the Ntuzuma B sewer reticulation. This was in February 2020 and was signed off by Sipho Nzuza, who is now co-accused in the case. I reported this to the city’s political and administrative leadership in June, but don’t believe anything has come to my request for an investigation.

The councillors

Two councillors were arrested in the original swoop in May 2019- former Mayor Zandile Gumede and former Human Settlements and Infrastructure Chair Mondli Mthembu. Whilst Gumede’s trajectory is well-known, the position of other councillors involved requires further examination.

The investigative report- and court proceedings- mention that 62 councillors worked with those already charged to carry out the DSW tender scheme.

Four more councillors were arrested in December 2019: Sthenja Nyawose, Zoe Shabalala and Grace de Lange. The fourth councillor has since passed away.

Despite the ANC’s drawn-out removal of the former Executive Committee, eThekwini Municipality’s political leadership has done absolutely nothing about any of these councillors.

The Municipal Structures Act contains the Code of Conduct for Councillors. It provides for action for those accused of wrongdoing by the Speaker or a committee established for that function. eThekwini has a fully-fledged Ethics Committee. It also provides for investigations to be initiated.

Despite repeated requests to this effect, Speaker Weziwe Thusi and Ethics Committee Chair have flatly refused to initiate any kind of investigation or charge those who have been arrested.

The four councillors still in eThekwini cost ratepayers almost R200 000 per month and it has been like this for almost a year. This is excluding the EXCO and Mayoral salaries that Mthembu and Gumede received for four months respectively.

Why does eThekwini refuse to do anything about these councillors, allowing them to continue as usual? Whilst the Ethics Committee spends its days deliberating on Councillors who owe small municipal debts, the alleged fat cats sit in comfort.

The officials

Two key officials who the report names as being the alleged implementing agents of the entire saga- and who have both been arrested- are DSW’s Robert Abbu and SCM’s Sandile Ngcobo.

The report makes it clear that both did not play minor roles. Gumede and Mthembu are alleged to have manufactured a position in DSW to ensure that Abbu could control the tender process and control it he apparently did.

Ngcobo seemingly played a key role in various SCM processes that ensured that the contractors of choice got the big tenders. For his hard work, his family was bought an R1 million Jaguar by three of the contractors in question.

Both occupy senior and well-paying jobs in the municipality. By my estimation, Abbu should be on a task grade 19, earning between R1.5 and R1.9 million per year. Due to his age and years of service, it is likely to be on the higher end.

Ngcobo is also suitably senior and should earn similarly, or slightly less.

Instead of taking harsh action against the two and implementing action to dismiss them on the evidence at hand, both were suspended with full pay and eventually moved back into municipal work.

Abbu was moved sideways into Electricity, which falls under the same cluster as DSW.

He retired in the full employ of the municipality on 31 August.

Last week, two different tip-offs alleged that without Ngcobo’s influence on the city’s SCM processes, certain pockets were apparently running very dry. The informants said that plans were underway to work him back into the system.

Lo and behold, I am informed that Sandile Ngcobo returned to work on Monday. Like Abbu, to outmanoeuvred bail conditions, he has been moved sideways into another department within the cluster that Finance sits in and will now be working in Disaster Management.

City Manager Sipho Mzuzu’s suspension expired after three months and he is now on negotiated leave with full pay.

What is clear that this is a disaster, and that eThekwini has failed to manage it.

Despite the Mayor’s tough talk on corruption and some minor improvements, Gumede and Co seem to still be pulling all the strings in eThekwini. How is it possible for such damning evidence- commissioned by and in the possession of the city- to exist and for it to be business as usual?

The city’s leadership has some very serious questions to answer.

• Why haven’t they attempted to dismiss Robert Abbu and Sandile Ngcobo? Why is Sandile Ngcobo back at work?
• When is the Speaker going to act against those councillors facing serious charges, as is her duty in terms of the Structures Act?
• When is the report about Nzuza going to be made available to Council?
• Why are companies whose directors have been charged with tender fraud not been blacklisted?
• The reality is that eThekwini very little has actually changed in eThekwini. There are some good people who are trying but frankly, they’re not winning. The reality is that the political will doesn’t exist within the ANC at large to resolve these problems and the only real solution is to boot them from office in eThekwini.

Issued by The DA