Publications
Partners
KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala has not taken action against the province’s director-general Dr Nonhlanhla Mkhize for her role in splurging R70 million on memorial services for former president Nelson Mandela because she has applied for a review of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s report.
The irregular expenditure took place in December 2013 in Mpumalanga, where Mkhize was director-general, but Zikalala must deal with it because she is now employed by the KwaZulu-Natal government.
Read: Hawks take on Mpumalanga's R70m Mandela memorial case
In her report released on May 9, Mkhwebane had recommended that Mpumalanga Premier Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane write to Zikalala and ask him to take “appropriate action” against Mkhize within 14 days of the release of the report. Mtsweni-Tsipane has spoke to Zikalala.
Mtsweni-Tsipane’s spokesperson, Sibongile Mkani-Mpolweni, said: “[Mtsweni-Tsipane] has implemented the recommendations of the Public Protector insofar as they relate to the premier of Mpumalanga. To this effect, correspondence has been relayed to [Zikalala] in compliance with the findings of the Public Protector.”
Zikalala’s spokesperson, Bongani Tembe, said: “The director-general has applied for review against the Public Protector’s report in the Pretoria High Court. The premier cannot do anything until that process is finalised.”
Mkhwebane investigated this expenditure following a complaint lodged after an exposé in City Press. She found that Mkhize violated prescripts of the Public Finance Management Act and Treasury regulations in the way she appointed celebrity Carol Bouwer’s events management company – Carol Bouwer Productions – to host memorial services shortly after Mandela’s death on December 5 2013.
Mkhwebane also found that then premier David Mabuza’s office did not have measures, including supply chain committees, in place to utilise the R70 million, and the expenditure was therefore irregular.
•The tender was not advertised, and Mkhize personally phoned Bouwer and gave her the job after her company was chosen from a group of service providers on a database. Other service providers were overlooked and there was no proof that they could not do the job;
•There was no appointment letter issued to Carol Bouwer Productions and a service level agreement between government and the company was signed and approved after the company had already commenced work;
•Bouwer was in Malaysia when her company was appointed and she arrived in Mpumalanga within 24 hours of receiving Mkhize’s call;
•Bouwer started work before Mkhize had obtained approval from the department of finance to deviate from usual procurement processes because the memorial services needed to take place quickly;
•Carol Bouwer Productions was paid R44.2 million for the work, while other service providers were paid, but there’s no evidence to show how much they received;
•Former finance MEC Madala Masuku approved the budget of R70 018 000 on December 6 2013 before the deviation from procurement processes was approved. No document outlining how the R70 million budget was arrived at was given to provincial Treasury head of department Nombedesho Nkamba; and
•Payments regarding the event were made directly from the bank without following the process to capture invoices and keep records.
The Mpumalanga cabinet then tried to sweep the matter under the carpet, even though it admitted that the costs for services and goods for the memorial services were “exorbitant”. This is telling because a political committee comprising MECs took part in organising the events.
The cabinet passed the matter on to the provincial legislature for investigation, but its term was ending on May 7 2014, so there was no follow-up of the issue.
The chairperson of the EFF in Mpumalanga, Collen Sedibe, said that more officials in the Mpumalanga premier’s office and Treasury should have been included in Mkhwebane’s report for their roles in the debacle.
“Our worry is that, why is she singled out in the premier’s office? There were many people involved there and in the department of finance,” Sedibe said.
 |
| ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
