THREE of the four Casspir armoured vehicles, ordered from Denel SOC Ltd at a cost of more than R20-million rolled into eThekwini on Wednesday, 30 January, more than two years after they were ordered.
Painted in the distinguishable blue and white of eThekwini’s Metro Police, the controversial Casspir vehicles, originally designed for use in the Namibian border war, were ordered when it became apparent that the originally specified Nyala urban armoured personnel carriers were no longer in production.
Deputy mayor Fawzia Peer said with the increase in protests and land invasions in Durban, these vehicles would help safeguard police attending these volatile situations.
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Originally recommended by former Metro Police head Eugene Nzama and approved by the former city manager Sibusiso Sithole on 18 March 2016, the department identified the need for several specialised vehicles to include six Nyala armoured personnel carriers as part of the equipment required for the Public Order Policing (POP) unit to successfully address and combat increased service delivery protests ahead of the 2016 and 2019 elections.
According to Councillor Andre Beetge, DA spokesperson Municipal Public Accounts Committee (Mpac), upon being made aware that Denel had at the time closed both the Nyala and Mamba production lines, the purchase of Casspirs were considered as merely a short term strategy to protect members against injury during protest action. In the long term, the city wants the Casspirs replaced with Nyala or Mamba vehicles as they fit the specifications for the requirement.
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Beetge said that without at the time making any price or specification comparison, Sithole confirmed the municipality’s intention to purchase the vehicles at the unit price of R4 949 363 and a delivery fee of R31 065 per unit in a document dated 26 October 2016.
“Subsequent to this document, Supply Chain Management (SCM) issued an order a month later on 30 November 2016 which indicated that the price per unit had escalated by R249 961 to R5 230 389 per unit, which represented an overall increase of R999 844 between the acceptance of quotation and ordered amount,” he said.
He said the matter was subsequently inherited by the current city manager Sipho Nzuza and newly appointed Metro Police commissioner Steve Middleton who in turn contributed the delay in delivery being due to the City not having applied for authority to operate armoured vehicles in an urban environment.
“With mounting dissatisfaction and increased service delivery protests being recorded in the run-up to the 2019 provincial and national elections, the vehicles could possibly not have arrived at a better time – whether to subdue or to regulate remains as much an open question as to what happened to the R1 million between the original quote and the order signed by the accounting officer,” said Beetge.
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