DA calls for city manager to be suspended over tender fraud

The party is insistent that Ekurhuleni city manager Khaya Ngema be placed on suspension until the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) has completed its investigation into the alleged unlawful awarding of a R32-million tender.

It has been alleged that Ngema irregularly awarded a tender to a company called Qbit to perform an institutional review of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality.

The metro’s legal and corporate division allegedly cautioned against the appointment, as the company did not meet the necessary policy requirements.

Qbit was, however, still appointed and has allegedly been paid for work it has not done.

Ngema is allegedly also under investigation by the public protector, Thuli Madonsela, in connection with allegations of gross irregularities related to the awarding of contracts worth R109-m to fix roads and pavements.

“Throughout the protracted Qbit scandal, the common denominator is Ngema,” said DA leader in Ekurhuleni, Fortune Mahano.

“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 in to question.”

Mahano claims 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 side stepping a serious fall-out within its own ranks over how to deal with the matter,” he said.

“The item is being tossed around like a hot potato, first brought to council two weeks ago (beginning of August), but immediately withdrawn after the ANC failed to comply with council procedure for tabling an in-committee item.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 to consider the item again, but was inexplicably cancelled when all councillors arrived at the Germiston Civic Centre for the meeting.”

According to Mahano, 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-m was spent on an institutional review aimed at improving all-round service delivery, which has proved to be of limited value,” he said.

The DA has demanded to see the Gobodo Report — an external report compiled by Gobodo Forensic Investigative Accounting.

This company was allegedly appointed by Ngema to investigate the Qbit tender.

“Before that, he had ignored council’s decision, taken 18 months ago, to urgently refer the matter to the SIU.

“Since then, he and the Mayoral Committee, have flouted repeated requests from the Municipal Public Accounts Committee 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, 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.”

In addition, Mahano bemoaned that every confidential letter, memo or report relating to Qbit is given only to a select few, including Ngema.

“The conflict of interest is glaring,” said Mahano.

“The exclusion of opposition parties in this process is overtly obvious.”

Mahano stated that 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,” he said.

“Ordinary councillors in the ANC should be just as outraged as those of us on the opposition benches about being kept in the dark.

“This issue smacks of a cover-up and protection of ANC appointees.”

ANC responds

The ANC caucus in Ekurhuleni has accused the DA of “cheap and opportunistic politics”, following accusations made by the latter that the party was ”brushing under the carpet” the investigation into alleged fraud, involving senior officials and possibly politicians.

“It is not surprising that the DA has taken this route of accusing the ANC on this matter,” said ANC chief whip Clr Robert Mashego.

“They accuse us of everything, anyway.

“They are the opposition and they will use any opportunity to portray themselves as saints at our expense.

“This attitude of opportunistic and cheap politics ends up blinding the DA from making informed decisions on issues.”

According to Mashego, while the ANC agrees that the process of implementing the council resolution has taken too long, the ruling party demanded and understood the explanation that was given by city manager Khaya Ngema on the matter.

“We called in the city manager to explain this matter to us, because we were also concerned about the progress in terms of the implementation of the council resolution,” he said.

“He explained the process involved and why he had opted for the route of the forensic investigation and we understood.”

Mashego stated that the ANC subscribes to and respects labour laws, hence the decision to allow for all due process to be followed before acting on the matter.

“The matter is now in the hands of the SIU and has also been brought to the attention of the MEC for Local Government and the Auditor General, as per the council resolution,” he said.

Mashego described the DA’s call for the city manager to be suspended as an “ill-informed and premature call to make if you have not even seen the forensic report”.

“After being informed by legal experts that it would be detrimental and/or even result in litigation against council to circulate the report to all councillors before the people who are cited are given a chance to respond to it, we immediately demanded that this process be speeded up so that councillors can get the report as soon as possible and deliberate on it,” he said.

“This will be finalised in time before the next council meeting, on Thursday (August 28), and the forensic report will then be handed out to all councillors for deliberation on that day.

“We know that we have the duty to protect public funds and root out corruption.

“We shall do that.

“However, in doing this we do not want to be reckless and play to the gallery with the lives of other people.

“We must make sure that all due process is followed, so that the desired outcome is achieved.

“As the ANC government, we subscribe to clean governance and remain confident of our record in dealing with corruption in Ekurhuleni, which speaks for itself.”