The 14-day cooling-off period did not apply when the eThekwini Municipality awarded the R320 million Durban Solid Waste (DSW) tender in December 2017 due to a deviation from standard tender procedures, a State witness told the Durban High Court on Friday.

This is because Section 36 of the Supply Chain Management policy had to be put into effect at this time, and the municipality needed to urgently get service providers to collect waste.  

The State witness, who cannot be named as per a court order, said this during her cross-examination with defence counsel, Advocate Credo Mlaba.

Mlaba is counsel for former city manager Sipho Nzuza, who is the third accused in the matter. 

Nzuza and former mayor of eThekwini Municipality Zandile Gumede are charged with 20 others for money laundering, racketeering, fraud, corruption, and contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act and the Municipal Systems Act relating to the DSW R320 million tender.

Earlier this week, the witness who worked for the tenders and contracts unit within the municipality told the court that she was forced to issue letters of award to service providers to collect waste without allowing the 14-day cooling-off period. 

She said she was forced to break internal controls by issuing letters of appointment to companies that had been recommended to collect waste without Nzuza’s signature.

The court has heard that due to the urgency of the matter, the Solid Waste Unit had gone to the Bid Adjudication Committee (BAC) to ask for authority to source quotations from experienced service providers to collect waste in the city. This is because the contracts of the current service providers at the time were expiring on December 31, 2017. 

This came after the unit received a lot of bidders in November for this tender and realised that they were not going to finalise the process on time. 

Additionally, counsel for the fifth accused, Sandile Ngcobo, advocate Jimmy Howse SC, started his cross-examination and referred the witness to a transcript of a BAC meeting on December 19, 2017. The witness attended this meeting.

He asked her if Ngcobo was referring to the Solid Waste Unit when he said the compliance checks for the service providers need to be thoroughly done. 

“That is correct, Mr Howse. He instructed at the meeting,” she said. 

The witness also agreed with Howse that Ngcobo said the Solid Waste Unit could get any service provider as long as they were experienced. 

The court has heard that compliance checks were not done. Additionally, the matter had to be adjourned early as one of the accused, Bhekokwakhe Phewa, was sick.

The matter was adjourned until Monday.

nomonde.zondi@inl.co.za

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