Judge finds municipal manager’s suspension unlawful

The Eastern Cape High Court in Gqeberha has reinstated a local municipal manager who was axed last year amid allegations of wide-scale graft involving hundreds of millions of rands in public funds.

Judge Mbulelo Jolwana, who made the ruling this week, described the allegations against Owen Hlazo – who heads up the Eastern Cape’s OR Tambo district municipality administration – as “serious” and was adamant they should be investigated further.

He found the way in which Hlazo’s contract was terminated was unlawful.

Hlazo was suspended as municipal manager in June last year, in the face of allegations involving dodgy payments totalling R168 million during his tenure.

He tried getting that suspension overturned in the Labour Court but the case was struck from the roll for lack of urgency after he tried to expedite it.

By then, though, the municipality had already terminated Hlazo’s contract, telling him what he thought was a five-year employment contract was, in fact, for two years and had already run its course.

Jolwana found this was unlawful.

The municipality had considered such an outcome and argued the court still should not reinstate Hlazo because of the reports of financial mismanagement, corruption and theft of municipal funds.

Jolwana said in his judgment, the picture painted, “if established, is egregious and atrocious”. But the municipality had not put up anything to prove there was, as it argued, a “breakdown of trust”.

He said the right way to establish whether there was any merit to the allegations was through a disciplinary hearing.

“The [municipality is] at large and [is] in fact obliged to institute disciplinary processes in which there will be an opportunity for a public hearing for the allegations of financial mismanagement, corruption and theft to be laid bare for all to see.

“In that disciplinary process [Hlazo] will be given a fair opportunity to explain his conduct or his role in the loss of municipal funds,” Jolwana said.

He said it was “unclear” why the municipality had decided against going this route in the first place.

“If [Hlazo] is responsible it goes without saying that he must account for the loss of public funds.

“The institutional failures that allowed him to commit such nefarious deeds must be identified and corrected.

“This surely must be in the interests of the [municipality] as well, instead of [Hlazo] quietly disappearing without accounting for his alleged malfeasance,” the judge said.