Nancy: Khanyile kept me out of loop

Former MEC instituted probe but handed it over to national Treasury

Former Eastern Cape social development MEC Nancy Sihlwayi, in the glare of a high court asset forfeiture order against Durban businessman Poovan Chetty, has denied knowing about the deals Poovan did with her department.

Sihlwayi, now a member of the Bhisho legislature after being sacked earlier this year, was particularly concerned about evidence led by East London deputy director for public prosecutions Nicole Peters.

In advocate Peters’s evidence, Sihlwayi’s former HoD, Stanley Khanyile, appeared to implicate Sihlwayi.

Peters told the court Khanyile had manipulated the system to ensure that a R30m contract, ostensibly to train rural women, went to Chetty’s company, Umnotho Training and Development Consultants. No proof of services rendered to rural women by Umnotho was sought by the department.

Peters said Khanyile had informed his staff he was executing Sihlwayi’s will.

Last week Khanyile said he knew nothing about the matter. Attempts to reach him this week were unsuccessful.

In an interview this week, Sihlwayi said she was aware up to a specific point that the business would be done, but she was suddenly kept out of the loop and only became aware that a contract was drawn up and signed with Umnotho through the Dispatch in 2015.

She said it was untrue that while she was MEC she had applied pressure to ensure that Umnotho received business to the value of R30m.

Sihlwayi sketched the background to the issue, which stemmed from a National Development Agency (NDA) contract given to Umnotho by her department.

She said that when Khanyile arrived in the department from Cogta in 2015, she had a meeting with a senior NDA executive discussing her concerns about how the agency was operating in the province.

“In that meeting I raised concerns about how the NDA did not want to be managed by the [social development] department. I asked can’t we get an entity that will manage some of the NDA programmes?”

She said: “The HoD [Khanyile] said there are entities that can qualify to execute this.”

Sihlwayi then directed Khanyile to use “proper and relevant” legislation and look for such an entity. “I was shocked when the newspaper [Dispatch] published a story saying the contract had been awarded via a deviation process. I went to the HoD [Khanyile] with the newspaper and enquired because I thought this would go through normal tender and procurement processes because I was patient about it. I also asked how he proceeded even though Treasury had raised a concern over the deviation process as stated in the article,” she said.

She instituted an internal investigation into Umnotho but handed the probe over to national Treasury. She said the Treasury report arrived at the time when she was leaving office and she never read it.

She was also aware that Hawks investigators were starting to visit Khanyile’s office. She said she was visited by the Hawks earlier this year and gave them a three-page affidavit.

In 2017 the Dispatch reported on how the social development portfolio committee pushed Khanyile to scrap the contract with Umnotho. He submitted a report to the committee in September 2015 titled “Report on contracting Umnotho Development”, but parliamentarians rubbished it.

Last year Cogta MEC Fikile Xasa said that when Khanyile was his HoD, Khanyile had appointed Umnotho to conduct forensic investigations in municipalities although he was not empowered to do so.

I went to the HoD ... and inquired because I thought this would go through normal ... processes