The head of eThekwini Municipality’s anti-corruption unit has raised concerns about the failure to act against those the unit has flagged for allegations of wrongdoing, saying this undermines the fight against corruption.
Thulani Ntobela, the City’s integrity and investigations unit (CIIU) head, was speaking on the City’s communication platform, eThekwini Matters.
He took over the unit a few months ago following the resignation of Mbuso Ngcobo. Ngcobo was one of the witnesses that testified in the criminal case involving former Durban mayor Zandile Gumede and several officials from the City. He quit the post amid rumours that he was receiving threats.
Speaking on the City’s success when it comes to dealing with the cases before it, Ntobela said it was difficult to measure the success when the recommendations of the unit were not implemented.
“Success is a difficult word because our success depends on how the people take our recommendations forward.
“For us to say we have made some findings, recommendations are not a success if the perpetrator is not put in jail, or is still an employee of the municipality and has not been dismissed, nor remedial steps were taken.
“So that case remains unsolved as far as we are concerned when it comes to success because we cannot pat ourselves on the back, to say we have successfully investigated this particular case, when the person who must implement has not implemented the recommendations. So it depends on other people,” he said.
Ntobela said some managers simply provided reasons why the recommendation could not be implemented, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
“In some cases we open a case and the police investigation takes long, until we lose track of that case. We look and cry as (our cases fail).”
Speaking on the cases that the unit has resolved, Ntobela revealed that when he started there a few months ago, the unit was still dealing with cases dating back to 2017 that had not been concluded.
He added that these cases were essentially meaningless when it comes to consequences because even if they were finalised, it would be impossible to pass sanctions as they had reached prescription.
“We had cases of 2017, 2018, 2019. The negative impact that those cases have is that it does not yield any results when you successfully solve them because they have been subjected to prescription.
“You cannot go and recover the money because its been more than three years. That was my focus, to say, let’s clean all the backlog so we can focus on the current and the future.”
He said to date the unit had dealt with cases from 2017 and were now halfway with cases from 2019, and hopefully by January they would be dealing with cases from 2020 onwards.
DA leader in eThekwini Thabani Mthethwa said the city manager should account for lack of consequence management in the municipality.
He said if heads of department do not act on CIIU recommendations, then the city manager must act.
The Mercury