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The Public Works officials facing disciplinary hearings over the R246 million spent on upgrades to President Jacob Zuma’s homestead in Nkandla will meet lawyers on Monday to work out a way forward.
Nicknamed the “scapegoats” by the media, the 11 officials represented by the Public Servants Association were all still employed at the department, said the association’s Kwa-Zulu-Natal manager Claude Naiker.
“There have been no suspensions, and they continue to work as normal with the hearing hanging over their heads,” he said on Friday.
They would meet lawyers to consider whether to appeal the Pietermaritzburg High Court’s decision last week to grant access to the media, he said, adding that the judgment was being studied this weekend. At issue, he said, was whether media access would prejudice their members.
Naiker said that the PSA had anticipated that the department would drop the charges in light of Zuma’s confirmation that he would pay back some of the money for non-security upgrades in the wake of the Constitutional Court ruling on the Nkandla matter on March 31.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t heard anything officially,” he said adding that the decision to charge the officials had caused considerable stress.
“Apart from the cost and the time it has taken, what people don’t realise is that these employees are ordinary public servants. They are not used to this type of attention. Some have been on sick leave, others have seen psychologists,” he said.
The PSA would “go to the hilt to try and protect our members and make sure that if they haven’t done anything wrong they are exonerated of all charges.”
He said the department’s insistence that all cases be treated individually – with separate chairpersons instead of a single collective case – had made the process very costly and complex.
The individual hearings got under way in October 2014, but were put on hold pending the outcome of an application for media access lodged in the high court by Media24, Times Media Group and the Mail & Guardian.
The senior officials face charges of procurement misconduct, project management misconduct, and supply chain management violations.
