A defence lawyer for one of the accused in the the R300 million Durban Solid Waste (DSW) tender case at the Durban High Court on Tuesday accused state witnesses of giving contradictory evidence.
Zandile Gumede, a former eThekwini municipality mayor and 21 others face numerous charges, including money laundering, racketeering, fraud, corruption, and contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act and the Municipal Systems Act relating to the tender.
Jimmy Howse SC, who is representing the fifth accused, Sandile Ngcobo, deputy head of supply chain management in eThekwini, started his cross-examination on Tuesday of witness Y, a contract administrator in the City.
As per a court order, the media is not allowed to name witnesses.
On December 18, 2017, the witness said she had the Bid Adjudication Committee (BAC) report that the DSW unit had prepared as they sought authority from the BAC to seek quotations for experienced contractors to collect waste around the City. Ngcobo was the BAC chairperson at the time.
This is because the contracts were expiring on December 31, 2017, and DSW had not appointed new service providers.
The witness said she had copies of the declaration as well as tender documents.
She told the court that it was procedure when submitting documents to the compliance monitoring unit, that they make copies even though they would give the unit the original documents. The compliance monitoring unit does compliance checks before a company is awarded a tender.
This witness told the court that the normal procedure is that everything starts at compliance before it goes to BAC. However this was an emergency and normal procedures were not followed.
On December 18, witness Y said she was under pressure and was going to different units to get signatures before going to the BAC. And she had to get a signature from the compliance unit, without the compliance checks being done.
Moreover, the witness agreed with Howse that there was not enough time for compliance checks as there was an emergency to secure service providers.
Howse told the witness that it bothered him that she did not do the logical thing and left copies for the compliance unit to do compliance checks while she went to the BAC.
This is as witness X from the compliance monitoring unit told the court that he gave the DSW unit the green light to seek quotations and that he had put a condition that compliance was not done while witness Y had promised to provide this to him after the BAC meeting.
“There is a procedure at compliance to receive documents,” witness Y responded.
Howse asked the witness how long it took for the compliance unit to do the compliance checks. She witness responded that she did not know the answer to this.
“Witness X had evidence that completely contradicts yours. He said you did not have the documents. You had said they were too much to carry,” said Howse.
Witness Y said she went to Witness X with all the documents but she did not leave any copies for him. However, Howse put it to witness Y that witness X was adamant during cross-examination that Y said she was going to bring compliance documents to him after the BAC.
The trial continues.