Durban mayor denies claims of fraud and graft
Allegations against Durban mayor Zandile Gumede that she facilitated money laundering‚ fraud and corruption to grease cronies’ palms are expected to dominate an executive meeting on Tuesday.
Gumede is under investigation by the Hawks.
A full council meeting is scheduled for Thursday, when sparks are expected to fly over the dramatic allegations.
Auditor-general Kimi Makwetu pulled his office’s staff from the municipality last week after death threats.
Gumede insists her administration will “drive a corruptionfree city”, adding that eThekwini had a zero-tolerance stance on all forms of corruption‚ fraud and maladministration.
On Sunday, City Press reported that a hard-hitting forensic report, which informed the Hawks investigation, found that Gumede summoned a municipal official to her home to demand that a R25m tender go to hand-picked companies.
The report stated that these companies may have belonged “to councillors and political figures that had supported Gumede in her political endeavours and that councillor Gumede owed them a token of gratitude in the form of contracts from eThekwini”.
Gumede‚ through her spokesman Mthunzi Gumede‚ denied the allegations‚ saying they were “propaganda by those working with the opposition to collapse the municipality”.
According to City Press, the forensic report, compiled by Integrity Forensic Solutions, named Gumede and Mondli Mthembu‚ a councillor who chairs the human settlements committee in council‚ and three other officials for allegedly orchestrating a corruption and “money-laundering scam”.
The alleged scam involved eThekwini paying R25m to hire about 800 chemical toilets for six months. Before this‚ the city had, for three years, paid about R3m to hire toilets.
According to the weekend report‚ this is one of the cases that led to last week’s withdrawal of auditor-general staff from the municipality.
The three officials implicated in the forensic report are the deputy head of the metro’s water and sanitation unit, Sibusiso Vilane‚ the department’s superintendent, Nkosinathi Zuma, and senior manager Vusumuzi Mkhwanazi.
Zuma told investigators that Gumede had summoned him to her home and “questioned him why it was that the list of suppliers that had been given to Vilane and Mkhwanazi by councillor Mthembu had not been awarded the contract”.
Zuma told investigators that after meeting Gumede, it dawned on him that Vilane and Mkhwanazi had not chosen the companies Mthembu wanted.
Mthembu reportedly then called the officials to a meeting‚ where he rebuked them for not appointing the firms he chose.
According to the Sunday newspaper‚ the report states that Mthembu insisted these service providers “be given work to supply the toilets since they were councillors and political figures that had supported Gumede … and that councillor Gumede owed them a token of gratitude in the form of contracts from eThekwini”.
After Makwetu pulled his staff from the municipality‚ Gumede called an urgent news conference at which she said its fraud and anticorruption policy aimed to “build an ethical and corruption-free municipality”.
Good governance remained a major priority for the city.
“Anyone who transgresses good business principles with the city — be it a member of the executive‚ a councillor‚ any member of our staff or private companies trading with the city — will be dealt with by the full force of the law,” Gumede said.