Durban - A senior KwaZulu-Natal government official and six colleagues have become the first victims in the Nkandla fallout.
Durban-based Department of Public Works (DPW) senior project manager Jean Rindel and six others face disciplinary action for decisions on security upgrades at President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla home.
A disciplinary hearing, to be chaired by a KZN advocate, will be held from Tuesday in Durban where Rindel will answer to eight allegations involving more than R50 million in irregular expenditure.
In the notice delivered to Rindel last Monday, which The Mercury has seen, he is accused of deviating from a competitive process when procuring service providers, including project manager and Zuma’s architect Minenhle Makhanya.
The notice reads: “As a result of your misconduct, the department incurred irregular expenditure in the amounts of:
* R17 017 567 in respect of Minenhle Makhanya Architects CC.
* R13 794 957 in respect of Ilangalethu Consult CC (trading as R&G Consulting).
* R2 517 482 in respect of Igoda Projects (Pty) Ltd.
* R6 006 457 in respect of Ibhongo Consulting CC (among others).
The hearing comes after the release of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) report on Nkandla and the unit filing a R155m civil claim against Makhanya in the Pietermaritzburg High Court.
In its investigation, the SIU found Rindel and 10 other department officials guilty of misconduct in either approving a procurement strategy or in the appointment of a service provider “and making rules as one went along”.
In her separate investigation, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela raised suspicions that department officials may have received improper benefits for unfairly awarding contracts to certain service providers who had also overcharged for their services and she asked the SIU to further investigate.
The SIU found there was no evidence to indicate that officials received any benefits from any of the service providers.
Rindel and his six colleagues, who are believed to be facing similar disciplinary charges, will be represented by Public Servants Association (PSA) labour relations officer Roshan Lil-Ruthan.
Lil-Ruthan said they would plead not guilty and were confident they would be exonerated. He said the charges were nothing but “intimidation tactics” by the department.
The employees “vehemently” dispute the allegations, he said.
“From the information that I’ve seen, they will be exonerated,” he said. “It seems – from the point of view of the PSA – these officials are being made scapegoats, whereas the senior officials have been let off the hook.”
He said the most senior officials had been “quickly moved out of the province to Pretoria”.
“As far as I know, none of them have been charged with misconduct yet,” he said.
Rindel is blamed in both the SIU and the public protector’s reports for hiring Makhanya, who in turn is accused of over-designing the security upgrades and overpaying himself as an architect and project manager.
Rindel is mentioned more than 100 times in both reports as he played a major role in acquiring service providers and compiling assessment reports for the office of the department’s minister.
Madonsela said there had been no basis for appointing Makhanya as he did not have “the necessary qualifications or capacity for security measures”.
Rindel is one of the three department officials who alleged to the SIU that they had been threatened and pressured by then minister Geoff Doidge and deputy minister Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu to fast-track the project.
According to the report: “The thrust of the threats was that if the president’s life was endangered because of the delays in the implementation of the upgrading process, department officials would be held responsible and, in such circumstances, would be redeployed or would even lose their jobs”.
Rindel would not be drawn on the matter. “I cannot give you any information about the story. I can’t say anything until the hearing is over,” he said.
The Mercury