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Contracts awarded by former Rustenburg Local Municipality manager Nqobile Sithole have come back to haunt her as mayor Mpho Khunou battles to quell fires amid allegations that he influenced the awarding of some.
Khunou said the allegations were “part of a smear campaign” aimed at “tarnishing my image” because there were “branches of the ANC in Rustenburg that held a view that I should become the provincial secretary”.
The provincial conference is expected to be held once political stability has been restored in the North West.
He said as the mayor he was not allowed to be part of the supply chain and decision making processes.
The municipality has had several contracts frozen or are under review while others were being investigated by the Hawks.
Khunou has blamed former municipal manager, Sithole, saying a decision was made to review all “major contracts” awarded during her tenure.
Read: R300m security scandal rocks Rustenburg municipality
The mayor accused Sithole of, among other things, paying “certain service providers, three in particular, and not others”.
She added that she, in “eight months had paid them 80% of their total contract value and she even took money from other services to pay them”.
However, Sithole said all this was shocking news to her as she was from KwaZulu-Natal and not into politics to be part of “any smear political campaign”.
She denied any wrongdoing.
“I was praised when I left the municipality. It is very hard for me to hear all these accusations and have to respond a year after I left Rustenburg,” she said.
In reaction to Sithole’s resignation in April last year the municipality said: “We believe she had done exceedingly well during her term as municipal manager. It is also important to note that Sithole’s appointment was historic in that she was the first young black municipal manager of the Rustenburg Local Municipality. She enjoyed support from most councillors during her tenure, which was important in achieving administrative objectives.”
In an interview with City Press this week, Sithole expressed shock that she was suspected of any wrongdoing, adding that she was actually the one who advised the municipality on the review and investigation of some contracts awarded.
“I am the one who advised the municipality for some contracts and the payments to be halted and for them to be investigated … and now when the mayor finds himself in hot water suddenly I am the bad person,” she said.
Meanwhile, Khunou has dismissed as “just hearsay” the allegations that he had a romantic relationship with a former director of Electronic Connect, a company that was awarded a contract to “implement turnkey smart city projects and related infrastructure”.
This has raised questions in and outside the municipality after the company was paid R3.5 million two months after it was told to stop its work because its contract was being reviewed.
Khunou told City Press they have taken the legal route to set aside the Electronic Connect contract, signed by Sithole, after irregularities were found which made the municipality to “believe that it was not executable ... They have since been served with papers and there is an exchange between our legal teams”.
He said they believe they have a “strong case”.
While he expressed doubts over the contract, Khunou said the R3.5 million paid was for work done by Electronic Connect in May, the implementation of the municipality’s expired Microsoft license.
Electronic Connect now appears to be a hot potato that neither Khunou nor Sithole want to handle. Sithole, who signed the contract, has also questioned the payment.
“I cannot investigate you and still pay you at the same time,” she said.
Electronic Connect co-director Zamo Mthiyane, confirmed his company got paid in August for work done at the time when the municipality was “illegally utilising [Microsoft ] licenses”.
“The implementation of this work was completed before the June 6 2019. We invoiced the municipality for the work done in June and only got paid at the end of August last year,” he said.
The company was served with a letter by an acting municipal manager on June 6 ordering it to halt its work.
Mthiyane said, as far as he knows, their contract was still effective.
“There is no provision on the agreement that I signed with the municipality that allows for a contract to be put on hold. So as far as I am concerned our contract is not on hold. I am in the process of filing an answering affidavit to their confusion and I am confident that the current confusion will be clarified soon so that we can commence with our work,” he said.
Sithole said the contract was awarded after lawyers gave it the thumbs up.
On her departure, Sithole said only the master services agreement was signed and not commercial agreement which stipulates exactly what the company was going to deliver and how.
She said one of the reasons she resigned in April last year was because of “interference” in “almost everything”.
She would not say by who or on what exactly.
On her resignation letter, she attached the municipal bank balance with Absa of R333 million saying she left the municipality in good financial health.
Khunou, however, said Sithole left the municipality “in the red”.
He said Sithole did not say that “R196 million of the R333 million was unspent conditional grant and that at the time we owed creditors R250 million.
The municipality was in the red.
“We are in the process of recovery … we have been able to bring down what we owe creditors to less than R100 million and hope to have received and have reserves by end of March through our aggressive recovery plan,” he said.
In response, Sithole insisted that she left everything in order and was not prepare to “discredit the mayor” with whom she had a relationship of “mutual respect”.
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