Latest news with #Mbhele
IOL News
a day ago
- Business
- IOL News
eThekwini City Manager under fire over R53 million payout due to service provider, call for suspension
eThekwini Municipality City manager Musa Mbhele has come under fire after the Constitutional Court dismissed an appeal by the City over a contractual dispute with a service provider. As a result, the City will have to pay the service provider R53 million. Image: Supplied / eThekwini Municipality eThekwini Municipality City Manager Musa Mbhele has come under fire with an opposition party calling for his suspension following a recent court order which requires the City to pay a service provider R53 million. The Democratic Alliance (DA) in eThekwini has demanded that Mbhele be placed on immediate suspension and referred to the Financial Misconduct Board. This demand comes in the wake of a Constitutional Court decision that dismissed the municipality's attempt to overturn a prior ruling, which held it liable for R30 million in damages. The damages stem from the municipality's 2013 decision to cancel contracts with Daily Double Trading 479CC. Courts previously ruled that the cancellation was unlawful, and the municipality's latest bid to appeal was dismissed this week by the Constitutional Court, which found it had no reasonable prospects of success. Lawyers for Daily Double Trading have given the City five days to pay or risk having their assets seized by the sherrif of the court to the value of the judgement. 'The DA believes that, as the head of the city's administration, Mbhele has a duty to safeguard public funds and not act recklessly when ratepayers' money is at stake. The party believes that his conduct in this matter warrants a formal investigation by the Financial Misconduct Board and that he should be suspended from his duties pending the outcome. He had every opportunity to comply with previous court orders related to this matter but refused to, thereby wasting public funds defending an indefensible position," said councillor Thabani Mthethwa in a statement. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ Last week, in a statement, eThekwini mayor Cyril Xaba said he fully respects the decision of the apex court. Once again, I accept the court's decision and await the finalisation of the quantum. I have already initiated a process to review how and why this happened, including the legal advice provided to the City. This will allow Council to determine what consequence action should be taken and how such monies can be recovered,' he added. He said where consequence management or recovery of state resources is recommended, such will be applied without fear or favour. 'This is an effective way of rooting out collusive corruption and other malfeasances.' THE MERCURY
IOL News
2 days ago
- Business
- IOL News
Constitutional Court dismisses eThekwini Municipality's appeal over R30 million payout
eThekwini City Manager Musa Mbhele. Image: Supplied The Constitutional Court has dismissed eThekwini Municipality in its long legal battle over R30 million payout to the service provider, Daily Double Trading 479 cc /Pholobas Projects. The municipality had approached the apex to appeal an earlier Durban High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that favoured the service provider. The Constitutional Court said the application brought by the municipality bears no reasonable prospects. The city revoked its contracts after discovering anomalies in the company's tender award during its investigations a few years ago. It was reported that in 2021, the company took the municipality to the Durban High Court, demanding that the cancellation of the contracts and blacklisting be declared unlawful, and for the court to rule that the municipality was indebted to it in the sum of R44.1m the amount owing for the cancelled contracts. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ However, before the Concourt could hear the matter, an out-of-court settlement was reached by the parties. A deal was struck where a municipal attorney, identified as Mr Moloi at the time, agreed that the municipality would give Daily Double R30 million as a settlement for its illiquid damages. According to the affidavit of City Manager Musa Mbhele, when this came to the attention of the former city manager, Sipho Nzuza, he refused to approve the R30 million payout. 'He stated he would not approve such a transaction as no one, including himself, had the authority to sanction payments above R30 million. He said whoever had told Moloi to strike a deal with Daily Double had been misguided,' Mbhele wrote in his affidavit. Mbhele stated that Nzuza indicated that this matter would need to go before the eThekwini full council for a decision. 'This matter was never placed before the council, and Nzuza made it clear in his affidavit before the High Court that he had refused to sanction the questionable settlement,' he added. Former eThekwini city manager Sipho Nzuza. Image: Zanele Zulu / Independent Newspapers Mbhele said that to this day, he has no idea who authorised or told Moloi to offer the company R30 million. 'If the municipality were to pay this money, no one would account for it,' he said. Additionally, Mbhele said this case raised questions of law that will impact not only eThekwini Municipality but also other municipalities throughout the country. He said the case required the Constitutional Court to clarify the ambit of an attorney's competency to enter into settlements in respect of municipalities and similar organs of state.
IOL News
4 days ago
- Business
- IOL News
EThekwini Mayor urged to take action against top city official after Concourt ruling
EThekwini Mayor Cyril Xaba has received a legal letter, urging him to act against City Manager Musa Mbhele. Image: Thuli Dlamini / eThekwini Municipality Pressure is mounting on eThekwini Municipality mayor Cyril Xaba to act against the City Manager Musa Mbhele following the Constitutional Court's dismissal of the City's appeal to overturn a lower order, which ruled that it must pay a service provider R30 million for the work the company had done. On Wednesday, the Constitutional Court dismissed the City's leave to appeal the Supreme Court of Appeal's decision after that court in February also upheld the earlier Durban High Court's ruling that the City must pay the service provider. The City is also expected to fork out more than R20 million in interest as the debt has accumulated interest since the high court ruling in 2022. The City also incurred legal fees as the appeal was dismissed with costs - now the case has drawn the attention of a former deputy city manager who was charged with misconduct after the city incurred legal costs in a separate matter. On Thursday, Sibusiso Makhanya instructed his law firm, Macgregor Erasmus Attorneys INC to write a letter of demand to the mayor to table the letter to the council within seven days. Makhanya, then the deputy city manager for trading services had been charged for misconduct for causing the City to incur R6 million in interest after it was taken to court by a service provider had not been paid R63.5 million. The City blamed Makhanya for failing to respond to emails from the Chief Financial Officer as there were allegations that the service provider had overcharged the City. The City argued that had Makhanya cooperated, the municipality would have avoided the R6 million in interest. Makhanya eventually left his job. Through his lawyers, Makhanya is now demanding that City management need to be consistent and hold Mbhele accountable for the cost the City will incur as a result of this week's Constitutional Court ruling. 'We brought to your attention then, as we do now, that one of the issues our client raised at his disciplinary hearing was the inconsistent application of the disciplinary code vis a vie himself and Mbhele. Mbhele was the person responsible for eThekwini having the default judgment granted against it and therefore incurring wasteful expenditure. "No further indulgences or communications will be forthcoming from our client and should you fail to act as you are obliged to, then we hold instructions to approach an appropriate forum for the necessary relief,' concludes the letter. Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Reverend Thulasizwe Buthelezi has joined calls for the mayor to act against officials responsible for the costs. In a statement the MEC called on the City to recover the money from officials that were responsible for the loss. In a short response, the City's spokesperson Gugu Sisilana said the municipality has accepted the court order, however, the mayor is yet to respond to the calls for action against for those responsible. Mbhele declined to discussing the letter of demand and referred questions to the mayor's office. [email protected]
The Citizen
28-05-2025
- Politics
- The Citizen
ANC hero George Mbhele remembered
The KZN ANC interim fundraiser, Nomagugu Simelane-Mngadi, addressed scores of ANC members at the George Mbhele memorial lecture at the Adventist Youth Camp in Anerley last Saturday. Simelalane-Mngadi said that not all ANC heroes were famous and that they were gathered to remember a man whose story is rarely told. 'The name George Mbhele does not easily roll off many people's tongues. This is because, way too often, we tend to only speak of the struggle for our liberation using names that became famous. We usually pay tribute to Mandela, Tambo, Sisulu, Winnie Mandela, and many others and rightly so; because those leaders made a great contribution to our liberation. But today, we have an opportunity to go deeper to take an unusual, but equally important route and remember those who were just as brave and committed, but whose names don't get mentioned every day in our public discourse. Comrade George Mbhele is one of those heroes,' she said. According to Simelane-Mngadi, Mbhele was a teacher, a husband, a father, a leader, and a freedom fighter at Umzumbe Fairview Mission in 1930, and joined the liberation struggle due to his strong sense of justice and patriotism. 'He was the second-born of four brothers and was the first in the area to gain an MBA degree from the University of Fort Hare, even though his father was a farm worker earning peanuts. Mbhele witnessed the repressive laws of apartheid first-hand as they stripped black South Africans of their land rights and dignity, such as the Group Areas Act, which forced people out of their homes to make way for whites-only areas,' she said. Also, Mbhele was a teacher at Lamontville in Durban where he also operated as an ANC youth leader. Twice, he was held on 90 days without trial in solitary confinement due to his political activism. 'In 1961, along with Govan Mbeki and Johnny Makhathini, Mbhele worked with Albertina Sisulu to help recruit nurses from South Africa to work in Tanzania. This was after an exodus of British nurses after Tanzania attained freedom. He was arrested in May 1963 and put in solitary confinement for 11 months before being sentenced to four years' imprisonment on a charge of being an active member of the ANC,' said Simelane-Mngadi. She said Mbhele was taken to Pollsmoor Prison, before being moved to Robben Island, where he stayed behind bars until his release in 1968. 'Mbhele served time alongside Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, and other great leaders of our liberation struggle. At the time of his arrest, his wife, Sibusisiwe Mbhele, was a nurse at King Edward VIII Hospital. She was left alone to raise their two children Njabulo (3) and Duduzile (2),' said Simelane-Mngadi. Mbhele's wife then became the family's sole breadwinner, but authorities forcibly removed her from her workplace for questioning, and she was eventually dismissed from the hospital and banned from working as a nurse. 'On his release in 1968, Mbhele was given a banning order from gaining employment as a teacher, attending church, or having more than two visitors at his home. The couple also had to report to the police station twice a week. On the ANC's advice, they left for the UK on April 10, 1970. He was offered a history teacher's job, after a headmaster read about his story in The Guardian newspaper. His wife also got a nursing job. The family moved to Zimbabwe in 1982, but his wife sadly died in 1987 after a visit to South Africa,' she said. In 1991, Mbhele returned to South Africa with his second wife, Ellen and her children, and became the deputy principal of Fairview Mission School, where his own journey had started. 'In February 1994, Mbhele was shot dead in his office at school, just two months before South Africa's first democratic national elections on April 27, 1994. He was shot by two young boys who came to the school wearing khaki uniforms and gave him a letter to read, but suddenly shot him dead,' said Simelane-Mngadi. HAVE YOUR SAY Like the South Coast Fever's Facebook page At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
IOL News
23-05-2025
- Business
- IOL News
eThekwini Municipality's City Manager unveils innovative service delivery strategy
eThekwini City Manager Musa Mbhele said that the City was focused on improving service delivery. Image: Doctor Ngcobo Independent Newspapers City Manager of eThekwini Municipality, Musa Mbhele, has outlined a bold new approach to boost service delivery that hinges on real-time accountability, regional management, and technology-driven innovation, while acknowledging systemic weaknesses that continue to frustrate residents. Speaking during the 2025 Customer Services Symposium at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli ICC in Durban and in an exclusive follow-up interview this week, Mbhele said a combination of unannounced site visits, artificial intelligence tools, and decentralised management will form the backbone of the municipality's renewed push for service excellence. 'We've picked up a couple of things that we are not happy about,' Mbhele said, referring to the unannounced depot visits he personally initiated. 'For instance, adherence to the legislated response time after service delivery queries have been raised, it takes too long, particularly when you're dealing with a water leak.' He said delays in responding to faults like water leaks are not just an inconvenience; they have a financial impact. 'The litres of water that we lose equates to the amount of money that we have spent buying that particular treated water.' Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ But the problem, he stressed, is not the frontline workers. 'The people in the depots are very well experienced, particularly the superintendent. They love their job. There's passion there. All they need is for us to support them with fleet, staff, and material.' To close the gaps, Mbhele is pushing for 'transversal management' and tighter standard operating procedures between municipal units. 'Sometimes they take long to respond to a water leak because they don't have a TLB to dig up that particular pipe. Now, they are not employed to manage the fleet; they are employed to fix the pipe,' he said. Mbhele said a key solution is regionalising service accountability so that each geographic area has dedicated teams with direct access to all necessary resources from HR and fleet to IT and supply chain, without relying on centralised departments. 'An area manager responsible for the South will have access to all those particular services and be able to provide them without having to wait for someone to come from Prior Road or Springfield.' Mbhele emphasised that this will make it easier for councillors and communities to get quick answers and action. 'It will not have to be the city manager, the executive director, or the mayor being phoned.' In his symposium address, Mbhele reaffirmed that citizen-focused innovation is non-negotiable. He highlighted the eThekwini Mobile App, downloaded over 150 000 times, which allows residents to log faults, pay bills, and get updates. 'This tool reflects our vision of building a smart, digitally enabled city,' he said. The app complements WhatsApp fault-logging lines and a soon-to-be-launched AI system that uses satellite technology to detect water leaks before they cause major losses. 'We are planning to go full steam on artificial intelligence,' he said. 'We also want electricity infrastructure to be monitored with smart sensors to detect tampering or damage before the community even reports it.' Beyond technology, Mbhele said the municipality must improve how it communicates with communities, especially in rural and township areas. 'We are bringing back to the centre, the role of councillors,' he said. But he stressed that councillors cannot calm communities if the municipality itself does not deliver. 'You can't bring the councillors and say they must manage the community's negative response when you as the City have not helped the councillor yourself.' The City Manager warned against destructive protest action. 'When they are not happy about the service, they must not go and put a burning tyre on the road, because they are reducing the lifespan of that particular road. In a few months, they will have to contend with a big pothole.' Mbhele's administration is also reinforcing transparency through the City Integrity and Investigations Unit, which investigates misconduct and allows residents to lodge complaints directly. 'Every municipal bill paid is not just a transaction,' he told delegates. 'It is a vote of confidence in our ability to serve.' THE MERCURY
