Plea to smash Emfuleni ‘corruption cartel’

Gauteng Human Settlements MEC Lebogang Maile has been asked to intervene in the “systemic corruption” at Emfuleni local municipality.

The ANC Youth League in Sedibeng has given the MEC until Monday to respond and act on the request to intervene and consider suggestions to break the entrenched corruption cartel that has its grip on the municipality.

Coordinator Jabu Maitse said Emfuleni was a classic example of how taxpayers’ money was wasted on corruption investigations but no one is ever arrested or fired.

“There has been no corrective measures despite various interventions. In fact, you have a situation where it has become a cartel protecting each other. Corruption there is systematic, involves many people and goes higher up,” he said.

Crisis

In a letter to Maile, Maitse stated that the rot has reached crisis levels, hindering the municipality’s capacity to effectively render service delivery.

He lamented that there has been no action against implicated individuals, despite forensic investigations, recommendations and charges.

“It appears that prominent people implicated are protected… individuals implicated, due to a lack of accountability, are allegedly purging anyone invoking or seen to be invoking long standing consequence management,” Maitse said in the letter.

Invincible

In 2018 The Citizen reported that the SA Police Service’s elite unit the Hawks were circling over five senior officials in connection with the municipality’s missing R872 million but that was the last we heard of it. Maitse said nothing came of this.

Elsje Oosthuizen, chief executive officer of Comperio Consulting, the forensic investigation firm appointed to probe irregular expenditure, had previously revealed how the municipal manager was hindering the process of dealing with those implicated in irregular expenditure of more than R670 million and the recovery of over R106 million.

Now, the municipal manager, Lucky Leseane, has tabled a report that has led to the suspension of chief financial officer, Andile Dyakala, just days after the latter had blown the whistle on the awarding of a R57 million contract by Leseane.

Maitse said there was no doubt that Dyakala was being targeted for exposing the rot in the municipality but nothing was done about the municipal manager, who has failed to produce a copy of his matric certificate for three years now.

Nerosen Venketsamy, senior manager in the Gauteng office of the Auditor-General, has confirmed receipt of a letter from the CFO detailing explosive information on the awarding of the insurance brokerage contract.

He said the letter will be processed according to the auditor-general policy on request for investigation, if warranted.

Brazen

In the letter Dyakala explained how Leseane, who has since refused to comment, issued the appointment letter for the contract without clearance from the provincial government as part of Section 139.

“This clandestine approach in the issuing of the appointment letter disregarded the constitutionally invoked provincial intervention currently in place and undermined the role of (Maile) and the role of lead administrator [Gilberto Martins],” the CFO revealed to the AG.

– siphom@citizen.co.za