ALBERTON – The President’s description of Ekurhuleni as the most corrupt Metro in Gauteng has come back to haunt the ANC in the form of the now notorious R32-million Qbit tender saga.
The Democratic Alliance will expose all attempts by the ANC in Ekurhuleni to brush under the carpet an investigation into alleged fraud, involving senior officials – and possibly politicians – worth millions of rands of public money.
The antics reveal the secretive and autocratic style of governance advocated by the Mayor and his Executive Committee.
The DA reiterates its call for City Manager, Khaya Ngema, to be suspended until the matter has been investigated by the Special Investigative Unit (SIU). Throughout the protracted Qbit scandal, the common denominator is Ngema. As signatory to the tender – against the advice of legal and financial officials – blatantly ignoring Council resolutions and by taking matters in to his own hands, his personal motives must be called into question.
The majority party has turned the workings of Council into a circus over the issue. Not only dodging the opposition’s demands for transparency, but is clearly also sidestepping a serious fallout within its own ranks over how to deal with the matter.
The item is being tossed around like a hot potato, first brought to Council two weeks ago, but immediately withdrawn after the ANC failed to comply with council procedure for tabling an in-committee item. Then a full special in-committee Council meeting was called for August 14, to consider the item again, but was inexplicably cancelled when all councillors arrived at the Germiston Civic Centre for the meeting.
The issue around the tender granted to Qbit has become incredibly messy and increasingly suspicious, bringing the Council as a whole into disrepute. There is no doubt that the ANC’s calls for investigation after investigation are merely attempts to further confuse the original issue, namely why, how and by whom R32 million was spent on an institutional review aimed at improving all-round service delivery, which has proved to be of limited value.
The DA demands to see the Gobodo Report, which Ngema solicited off his own bat, at a cost to the ratepayers, that has yet to be made known. Before that, he had ignored Council’s decision, taken 18 months ago, to urgently refer the matter to the Special Investigations Unit (SIU). Since then, he – and the Mayoral Committee – have flouted repeated requests from the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) for a report on the same issue from the Internal Audit Depatment, a department that reports directly to Ngema.
The Gobodo Report, already leaked in part to the media over the past fortnight, is being withheld from Council because, according to the ANC, an internal legal opinion – as opposed to an independent, external one – has advised that officials named in it would be compromised as they had not been given the opportunity to see or defend allegations against them.
Further, every confidential letter, memo or report relating to Qbit is given only to a select few, including the City Manager, whose conduct is at the centre of the matter. The conflict of interest is glaring. The exclusion of opposition parties in this process is overtly obvious.
The Gobodo Report belongs to the full Council and as such, must be tabled to it, even if it is as a confidential item to allow individuals implicated a chance to respond. The Council is a legally constituted body of responsible, democratically elected public representatives.
This issue smacks of a cover-up and protection of ANC appointees. The DA demands:
1. The immediate suspension of the City Manager pending the completed investigation by the SIU and report to Council;
2. A full and undoctored version of the Goboda Report to be tabled at the ordinary August Council meeting in two weeks;
3. Proof that the matter, with all possible background information, has been sent to the SIU as well as the Public Protector; and
4. An independent outside legal opinion on the outcomes of all of the above, before action is taken.
The DA calls for all councillors of Ekurhuleni – no matter their political affiliation – to band together against corruption and manipulation and demand transparency on the spending of public monies.
Those who don’t risk being called to personally account in the future for what will prove to be gross wasteful and negligent expenditure.
