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Mpumalanga’s acting director-general, Kebone Masange, has been accused of lobbying forensic auditors in premier Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane’s office to amend their report, which recommends that an official – who was fired for fraud related to RDP housing – be exonerated.
Former housing inspector Sandile Ngwenya was fired in 2016 after a disciplinary committee found him guilty of having certified RDP houses that did not exist.
Ngwenya’s dismissal took place seven years after the 753 houses were constructed by JV Mdhluli Construction in Nsikazi, near Mbombela.
The charges, brought by the human settlements department, were based on a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) report, which the integrity management unit (IMU) found to be “inaccurate”.
The department did not conduct its own investigation when it charged Ngwenya, but relied on the SIU report.
A high-ranking source told City Press that Masange had been allegedly cajoling IMU head Welcome Nkuna to amend the report so that Ngwenya remained dismissed.
Masange is head of the department of human settlements and is also currently acting as director-general.
“Now that he is the acting director-general and he is in the premier’s office, he has been trying to influence the IMU to amend its report instead of reinstating the official,” the source said.
The IMU has recommended that Ngwenya be retrospectively reinstated.
This will cost the department about R2 million in salaries.
According to documents City Press has seen, the SIU made a recommendation that Ngwenya be charged before the investigation was completed on March 12 2015.
“The SIU’s investigation is quite advanced. It will soon submit its report to the president … In the meantime, however, the SIU is constrained to bring to your attention that in its view, its investigation reveals that Ngwenya, a departmental housing inspector, may be guilty of misconduct,” reads its letter to the department.
“In our respective view, the evidence that we have gathered suggests that Ngwenya may have committed misconduct in respect of the certification of top structures, in that he certified that the relevant top structure had been completed in compliance with the approved plans and specifications.
“His certification in 11 instances resulted in the Mpumalanga department of human settlements paying JV Mdhluli Construction an amount of R458 152.44 in respect of top structures that had not been completed.”
But the IMU report, dated August 29 2019, exonerated Ngwenya and questioned the appointment of JV Mdhluli Construction without supply chain management processes having been followed.
The IMU found that JV Mdhluli Construction was irregularly appointed because there was no open bidding process and no service-level agreement was signed.
The contractor, the IMU found, completed the work “satisfactorily”, despite the questionable circumstances in which it was appointed.
“Physical verification was of the 20 houses that were allegedly not built, according to the SIU. The houses were identified and the IMU confirms their existence,” said the IMU.
The IMU also found that City of Mbombela councillors committed fraud by allocating houses to people who were not on the beneficiaries’ list.
The IMU said that the SIU’s report was improper as its investigation was not thoroughly conducted and, hence, had misled the department.
The department’s labour relations unit, the IMU report said, also misled the department when it recommended that witnesses who testified against Ngwenya in his disciplinary hearing be allocated houses.
“The department did not conduct its own internal investigations, but relied on the report produced by the SIU when dealing with this matter in disciplining Ngwenya,” it added.
In its recommendations, the SIU said that:
. The department should consider charging supply chain management director Thabo Mashile for flouting procurement processes, the Public Finance Management Act and National Treasury regulations; and
. Masange must take necessary steps against labour relations officials for recommending that houses be built for witnesses at a cost of R2 million.
Masange said: “I am not blocking anything. I am not blocking Ngwenya to be reinstated.”
He said that he could not change the SIU report, adding that he did not know who had commissioned the IMU investigation.
“I think the IMU overstepped … they should have gone to the SIU and questioned that report. The legal advice I got is that the case is sub judice and I cannot do anything about it,” Masange said.
Ngwenya said he had taken his dismissal on appeal to the labour court, but was unwilling to give more details.
He confirmed that the department had instituted a R2 million civil claim against him to recover the money it had spent for building new houses.
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