Since being elected as the City of Johannesburg’s (CoJ) executive mayor, Herman Mashaba has made good on his promise to root out corruption.
During his acceptance speech, he said that corruption would be declared public enemy number one, and that he would do everything in his power to make sure these issues are addressed.
In November last year, he appointed Shadrack Sibiya as the head of a brand new anti-corruption unit, to look into all investigations conducted in the city and its entities to ensure findings were correct. He was also tasked with investigating all awarded tenders to identify those awarded to relatives of council employees, city employees or public representatives themselves.
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Mashaba also announced during the 2016/ 17 adjustment budget in February this year, that R5 million will be awarded towards a skills audit of his administration, to ensure that the right people were in the right positions to ensure the city operated optimally.
According to reports from The Citizen, the mayor’s clean-up operation of the city has resulted in 1 920 cases being under investigation by the end of June.
The city’s acting spokesperson, Luyanda Mfeka, confirmed this and added that more than 100 city employees have been suspended, 12 had resigned and seven were dismissed. There was also an unspecified number that were issued with final written warnings.
“A total of 314 people have been arrested, including employees of the city.
The investigations vary from fraud and corruption, theft of city assets and hijacked buildings to unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure,” Mfeka said.
He also shed some light on allegations that the investigation’s framework was open to manipulation, with certain service providers being handpicked to conduct certain investigations without following the tender procedures.
“The appointment of service providers to investigate different cases complies with all the relevant legislation, such as the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act (56 of 2003) and the city’s own procurement policies,” he said.
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