Durban — The former mayor of eThekwini Municipality spokesperson Ntando Khuzwayo said the case against Zandile Gumede was cooked up.
Khuzwayo said this outside the Durban High Court on Thursday after the case was adjourned to Monday.
The advocate representing Gumede and some of her co-accused (including) Jay Naidoo asked the State witness who is the head of the City Integrity and Investigations Unit (CIIU), Mbuso Ngcobo, to give the court minutes of the meeting where the CIIU and the Investigations and Forensic Solutions (IFS) agreed to hand over the investigation to the police, based on the stack of documents that the CIIU received anonymously, about tender irregularities.
Gumede and her co-accused face more than 2 000 charges, including conspiracy to commit corruption, corruption, fraud, money laundering, racketeering, contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act and contravention of the Municipal Systems Act; amounting to more than R300 million concerning a DSW tender.
Khuzwayo said what happened on Thursday proves that all of this was cooked up.
“Lies have short legs, now the State is stuck. There are documents that they claim exist. This was a matter of going to the office and making copies of minutes of the meeting and bringing them to court,” he said.
He claimed that justice was being delayed and that this was also a delay on their part in proving their innocence.
“We are very sad,” said Khuzwayo.
Furthermore, he said if the minutes of the meeting existed they would have gone to court on Thursday and everything would have continued.
Khuzwayo said technology made things easier.
“The court would have adjourned for five minutes and they would have sent them by email. They do not exist,” said Khuzwayo.
The court adjourned for approximately two hours after adv Naidoo had asked Ngcobo to get the minutes of the meeting. After that time it was announced that the case would continue on Monday.
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