20 May 2010

The IFP has acquired further proof that the multi-million rand KZN Legislature catering tender for Nonkululeko Mhlongo, the mother of two of President Jacob Zuma’s children from Pietermaritzburg, was not awarded on merit. 

“Our latest findings go beyond the KZN Auditor-General’s ruling that this tender constituted irregular expenditure due to non-compliance with the 21-day period for review of bidding proposals and failure to appear in the Government Gazette, as required by the Treasury regulations,” said IFP KZN spokesperson on finance Roman Liptak MPL. 

Mhlongo’s company was awarded the contract to the value of R1,303,671 for catering for snacks and lunches at the Legislature in the 2008/2009 financial year. “The tender, which the KZN Auditor-General’s annual report subsequently labelled as ‘irregular expenditure’, has since been renewed several times, incurring further cost to the taxpayer, and is still running today,” said Liptak. 

The IFP has now established that the entire tender process was skewed in Mhlongo’s favour before it even began, with at least one employee of the provincial Legislature receiving kickbacks through a family member. 

“Mhlongo, who formed a joint venture with another caterer for the purposes of the tender process, has effectively submitted four parallel bids to the Legislature, multiplying her chances of landing the multi-million rand catering contract,” said Liptak. 

The list of 53 bids, which Speaker of the Legislature Peggy Nkonyeni continues to claim is regular, includes four variations on the name of Mhlongo’s joint venture Mazidube/Bucebo and Siyabelana Trading, namely Mazidube Catering; Siyabelana Trading; Siyabelana & Mazidube CC Joint Venture; and Siyabelana Trading Enterprise CC + Mazidube Catering CC Joint Venture. 

“This defeats the point of presenting competing options in a fair tender process and it was only possible because the Legislature employee in charge of the advertisement and compilation of bids was an indirect beneficiary of this tender,” said Liptak. 

The IFP has further established that the Legislature’s Bid Coordinator behind Mhlongo’s tender is Mohammed Ismail, formerly an employee of the ANC’s parliamentary caucus, whose mother owns a catering business and is Mhlongo’s sub-contractor within the flawed tender. 

“We are also aware that Ismail has been absent from work at the Legislature for most of 2009 and 2010, literally hundreds of working days in total while on full pay, without satisfactory explanation and with no disciplinary action taken against him by the Legislature’s Human Resources Department,” said Liptak. 

The IFP believes that Ismail’s absenteeism along with his involvement in awarding the flawed tender to the mother of two of President Jacob Zuma’s children could only have been tolerated because he has been under protection, if not instruction, from the top management of the Legislature. 

In addition, the IFP has discovered that while catering for the Legislature, Mhlongo has been using R45,000-worth of kitchen appliances supplied by the Legislature and the Legislature premises with water and electricity at no cost.  

“Almost daily for several years, Mhlongo has been charging the Legislature R60 per plate for breakfast and R166 per plate for lunch for up to 80 Members of Parliament and numerous guests with subsidised overheads,” said Liptak. 

The IFP calls again on provincial Treasury to investigate these claims, including possible complicity of Secretary of the Legislature Nerusha Naidoo and the Legislature’s overall irregular expenditure of R19,017,025 for catering in 2008/2009 in which Ismail was involved as Bid Coordinator. “We are offering Treasury investigators our full co-operation in this regard,” said Liptak. 

(In February 2010, when the IFP broke story of the Mhlongo tender's link to the Legislature's past irregular expenditure, the party wrote both to the the KwaZulu-Natal Auditor-General and the Legislature's Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts with requests for an independent investigation. No response has been received to date from either entity.)
 

Contact:
Roman Liptak
078 302 0929