Witness in Zandile Gumede trial prefers waste pile over irregular expenditure

IOL News

2 days ago

Former mayor of eThekwini, Zandile Gumede, with her supporters outside the Durban High Court.
Image: Nomonde Zondi
In the R320 million Durban Solid Waste (DSW) tender fraud case involving former eThekwini municipality mayor Zandile Gumede, a State witness has told the Durban High Court that she would prefer not to have a pile of rubbish picked up than to deal with irregular expenses for not following due process.
The witness, who cannot be named as per court order, is currently being cross-examined by advocate Jimmy Howse SC, who is counsel for Sandile Ngcobo, a fifth accused who was a deputy head of supply chain management (SCM) in eThekwini.
Gumede, Ngcobo, and 20 others are facing numerous charges, including money laundering, racketeering, fraud, corruption, and contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act and the Municipal Systems Act relating to the tender.
The witness told the court that waste collection is not an emergency, but a critical service.
The court has heard that the Durban Solid Waste Unit had sought authority in December 2017 to get experienced service providers to collect waste from January 2018. This is because the contract of service providers was going to expire on December 31, 2017.
In November 2017, the unit advertised a tender for waste collection, but they claimed that they received a lot of submissions and needed extra time to go through all of the proposals..
The witness during this time worked at the tenders and contracts unit. Part of her job included issuing letters of award to those who had won tenders.
She said that after the Bid Adjudication Committee (BAC) gave the DSW the go-ahead to get service providers and approved the quotations, that decision needed to be reviewed by the Executive Acquisitions Committee (EAC), which was established by former city manager Sipho Nzuza to advice him.
The BAC-approved quotations are subject to compliance checks, and then letters of appointment will be issued to the service providers.
Howse asked her if it made sense that the EAC had to consider this on January 29, 2018, when the service providers should start collecting waste on January 1, 2018.
The witness said that had she been instructed to do otherwise, she would have. "I was following due processes," she said.
Howse asked her if she had approached any of her supervisors to tell them that there were not going to be waste management services in January, considering the email that was sent by a DSW contract administrator stating that this was an emergency.
She said no and added that this was not the only contract she was dealing with.
Additionally, Howse asked her if the SCM policy had any distinction between critical and emergency. She said it was her view that this was not an emergency and she continued to refer to SCM policies.
She said the DSW Unit had a sole mandate to ensure contracts for waste management and illegal dumping.
'Failure to have those contracts does not result in an emergency. That is a failure to properly plan. In my view, Mr Howse, this was not an emergency,' she said.
On December 28, 2018, the witness said Ngcobo had asked her to prepare the letters of award for the contractors, who were going to collect waste in January 2018.
Howse said this was after his client received a call from the city manager enquiring about the letters of award.