State witness confirms former City Manager's role in waste tender decisions

A State witness has told the Durban High Court that the former City Manager of eThekwini Municipality was well within his rights to sign letters of award for the waste collection tenders in 2017.

The R320 million Durban Solid Waste (DSW) tender fraud trial involves former Mayor Zandile Gumede and 21 other accused who face numerous charges including money laundering, racketeering, fraud, corruption, and contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act and the Municipal Systems Act.

In 2017 the Solid Waste Unit had to urgently appoint service providers to collect waste in the City as the contracts of existing service providers were due to expire on December 31, 2017.

Moreover, the State witness who in December 2017 worked at the tenders and contracts unit has admitted under cross examination that Sipho Nzuza, the former City Manager was within his rights to require or ask the former deputy head of Supply Chain Management, Sandile Ngcobo about the letters of awards on December 28 2017. Ngcobo is also an accused in this matter.

This is as the Bid Adjudication Committee (BAC) chaired by Ngcobo approved the Solid Waste unit to approach experienced service providers to collect waste in eThekwini.

The BAC gave it approval on December 19,2017 for the Solid Waste Unit to get new service providers to collect waste. It also approved their quotations. This witness told the court that she did not take the BAC decision to the Executive Acquisitions Committee (EAC). The EAC was an advisory committee established by Nzuza to assist him to make decisions.

In giving various reasons for this, the witness on Thursday told the court that these decisions did not go to the EAC because she was on leave and the agenda was prepared days before the EAC.

She had also told the court that she was responsible for drafting the agenda for all the committees and decision circulars.

Despite the urgency of the matter, the witness said the BAC decisions about the solid waste tender reached the EAC on January 29, 2018.

Nzuza’s counsel, Advocate Credo Mlaba put it to the witness that Nzuza was faced with a situation where the waste was not going to be collected in the City and on December 28, 2017 he approached Ngcobo for an update on the waste collection and asked him to attend to the letters of award, as this was an emergency.

“Nzuza said it would have been impossible for him to wait for January 29, 2018 as the BAC decisions did not make it to the EAC meeting on December 21, 2017. Would you like to comment on that?”

The witness said it was understood this was Nzuza's role and the witness also agreed with advocate Jay Naidoo SC, counsel for Gumede that the SCM policy and regulations authorised Nzuza to sign the letters of awards based on decisions taken by the BAC. However, she said if he solely signed without consulting EAC, he would be disregarding his own internal policy.

Moreover, she said the EAC did not hold any power in the municipality; it was just there to advise Nzuza.

Mlaba continues with his cross examination of the witness.