Opposition parties shake up KDM

Opposition parties have called for heads to roll and a forensic investigation in the R1,3 million spent on a beach party over the holiday season.

The Democratic Alliance, Minority Front and African Christian Democratic Party want the rug lifted to clean up the controversial R1,3 million KwaDukuza music festival that took place in December (R1,3 million partied out, Courier, January 7).

“We would recommend the municipal manager be put under immediate suspension and a full forensic investigation be carried out regarding the 2014 KwaDukuza Music Festival,” said DA Chief Whip of Ilembe, Malcolm Hubner.

Immediately after the recommendation was made, MF councillor Bikram Sing stepped it up a notch and proposed a motion for the full investigation into the matter of the festival and for the suspension of both KDM’s municipal manager, Nhlanhla Mdakane and the director of communications, Sifiso Zulu.

ACDP councillor Nel Sewraj was quick to second the motion.

When the time came to vote on the matter, 11 councillors from opposition parties voted for the motion, but they were crushed by 28 ‘nay’ votes from the ruling African National Congress councillors.

“Although we lost, we achieved what we wanted. The facts came out, we raised our opinion on the matter and we continue to not support what was done and believe that the people responsible should be sanctioned,” said Hubner.

“The municipal manager manipulated the process, gave himself authority to act as financial officer while the CFO was on leave, and served his own advantage.”

According to Sewraj, the ACDP’s reason for their motion was that they believe the R1,3 million constitutes wasteful and irregular expenditure, although he believed one of the strategic implications of the party was that it marketed KDM internationally.

Hubner’s response to this was “Poppycock”.

Sewraj further said that although it is normal to hold the municipal manager responsible since he ultimately authorises such payments, they believe that the incompetence and lack of foresight of KDM’s communications directorate is the main culprit behind this confusion.

The directorate failed to notice that no allocation was made towards this event during the 2014/2015 budget and was oblivious that the vote (budget) for the annual music festival was missing from their own list of votes.

This is where the controversial “virements policy” was used to justify the movement of funds from underspent accounts to the beach party.

The objective of the virements policy is to allow limited flexibility in the use of budgeted funds to enable management to act on occasions such as disasters, unforeseen expenditure or savings etc. as they arise to accelerate service delivery in a financially responsible manner.

Some of the less obvious budgets that were used for the party were: moral regeneration programme (R31 800), state of the municipality address (R212 000), memorial event for the victims of violence (R250 000), KDM video project (R53 000) and ward committee members (R350 000).

Hubner said that it seemed very convenient that according to the virements policy, the CFO has to approve an amount above 25% or a maximum of R200 000 to be moved, but of course the chief financial officer was on leave from December 1, which meant the municipal manager had to approve it himself.