Durban - High-flying KwaZulu-Natal businessman Dr Victor Search “Seshi” Chonco has been accused of causing more than 2 000 former employees of his security company to lose their provident investment savings after retrenching them when he liquidated his company early this year.
He is the former husband of Princess Nombuso Zulu, the eldest daughter of King Goodwill Zwelithini and Queen Sibongile maDlamini Zulu. In July 2005, the couple married amid glitz and glamour in Pietermaritzburg, only to call it quits two years later.
Chonco, 58, his sister Thembisile Ngcobo, and former-receptionist-turned-managing-director, Happiness “Mpume” Nxumalo, owned Roman Protection Solutions, once a thriving security business based in Durban.
Before its liquidation in January, Roman Protection Solutions – a security, armed response and guarding services company, held lucrative contracts in the Western Cape, Gauteng, KZN, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape.
Clients included major banks and Wonderboom Airport in Pretoria.
Former employees suspect the company’s troubles began after it lost a major contract it held with Nedbank last year, where it had previously provided security solutions in banking halls, at ATMs and in office buildings.
Now operating as Roman Technologies, mainly in Durban and Gauteng, the company describes itself on its website as having a “proactive approach to asset protection”. It continues to provide services for FNB in key parts of KZN, but has closed its Eastern Cape and Western Cape operations, where clients once included the City of Cape Town.
When one of Chonco’s former employees and fleet manager Malusi Hlongwane, 42, lost his job at the end of January, the company cited the loss of the contract it had held with First National as a major reason. “Due to the loss of our main contract with First National Bank, the company will be restructuring staff in all departments and regions,” said managing director, Mpume Nxumalo, in a letter dated January 30, Hlongwane’s last day with the company.
Hlongwane has taken Chonco to the Pension Funds Adjudicator (PFA), and is leading a campaign to help his colleagues make the businessman pay back their provident fund contributions, some of which Roman Protection Solutions never submitted to the private security sector provident fund, despite deducting this mandatory contribution from employees.
He has also laid a charge of fraud against Chonco at the Brighton Beach Police Station.
When Hlongwane, who began working for Chonco in May 2012, contributed R300 monthly to the provident fund, and failed to receive his withdrawal benefit after he had lost his R4 000-a-month job, he discovered that Roman had not paid the fund.
Although Roman Protection Solutions was registered with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) on July 26, 2000, Chonco became a majority shareholder on June 1, 2003.
PFA adjudicator Muvhango Lukhaimane has found that Roman ought to have registered Hlongwane immediately after being employed, and paid the employee’s contribution to the provident fund no later than seven days after it had been deducted from him. The PFA also said that, despite some partial compliance at first, in the case of Hlongwane, Roman had “defaulted with respect to the payment of contributions from September 2012 to January this year”.
Although in July, Lukhaimane ordered Chonco to pay Hlongwane’s “outstanding contributions, together with late payment interest”, Hlongwane has received nothing. He says Chonco “is arrogant and extremely abusive to his former employees, who are suffering while he lives a lavish life”.
The Sunday Tribune was unsuccessful in obtaining comment from Chonco or Nxumalo.
Sunday Tribune