- Durban city manager Sipho Nzuza was in court on Monday for allegedly violating his bail conditions.
- He allegedly chaired a virtual meeting where he spoke about tenders and internal disciplinary issues, a violation of his bail.
- The court amended his conditions after coming to an agreement with his lawyer.
Bail conditions in the Durban Solid Waste (DSW) tender corruption case against municipal manager Sipho Nzuza have been amended after he allegedly violated them in October, the Durban Commercial Crimes Court heard on Monday.
Nzuza handed himself over to police and appeared before Magistrate Garth Davis after Nzuza was found to have allegedly violated some of his bail conditions by Hawks investigating officer, Colonel Ngoako Mpaki.
Nzuza is out on R50 000 bail, related to a R430 million tender fraud case in the DSW unit alongside former eThekwini mayor Zandile Gumede.
Through his lawyer, advocate Doda Madonsela, Nzuza argued that certain aspects of his bail conditions were vague, going as far as to say wording had to be rephrased in some parts.
Both the State, led by prosecutor Hazel Siraramen, and Madonsela agreed to amend two of his bail conditions – meaning he would still remain a free man working as city manager, but with a more clear indication of where his powers lie.
The main contested bail conditions included that he could not communicate in any way, directly or indirectly with witnesses related to the DSW tender audit trail.
Davis ruled that now, Nzuza would have to refrain from involvement of disciplinary processes completely and could not participate directly or indirectly in any or all supply chain management (SCM) processes.
Work
Colonel Mpaki said that upon his return to work, he called for all his access to be reinstated.
"On his return, Nzuza informed head of security and instructed him to reinstate his biometric access to the building. He further instructed his access to emails and other electronic networks be reinstated. Further [he] instructed his eThekwini chat groups be reinstated."
Nzuza chaired a virtual meeting where senior officials were in attendance in October, Mpaki said.
"The agenda included among others, progress on the reports of the City Integrity Investigative Unit (CIIU), progress on consequence management, supply chain management (SCM) and finance related matters. In respect of matters related to CIIU, the meeting discussed new and finalised cases of the CIIU and an update on disciplinary proceedings."
He said that with the supply chain related matter, the meeting discussed an ongoing security tender.
"Nzuza requested an update on the status of the tender process. It was further brought to my attention that about two weeks after this meeting, Nzuza issued letters of delegation to two delegates."
The delegates included the acting city manager Sipho Cele and the city's chief financial officer. He said a letter of delegation, which gives some of Nzuza's municipal manager powers away to the chief financial officer and acting city manager, demanded he have knowledge of city decisions and what was happening.
"Of concern was the fact that although the letters purported to delegate authority for approval of various SCM functions, the authority appeared to remain with Nzuza in that he required that each decision taken in relation to the delegation be reported to [him on] a weekly basis."
Mpaki read a part of the delegation letter which said: "In executing rules and responsibility the first delegate shall submit [a] weekly report to me – each weekly report shall be sent via email to Sipho Nzuza by no later than 16:00 each Friday..."
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