Durban - The Nkandla disciplinary hearings are off.
The Public Service Association's KwaZulu-Natal manager, Claude Naicker, told The Mercury on Wednesday that the hearings had been “dispensed with”.
He said the Department of Public Works had “settled” all ten of its cases against officials implicated in the awarding of contracts for the controversial upgrades on President Jacob Zuma’s northern KZN home.
Naicker said he could not divulge the terms of the settlement agreements due to confidentiality clauses contained therein but he did say all the officials were “back at work, continuing with their duties”.
This comes after three years of stop-start hearings.
The hearings got underway in 2014 but had to be put on hold soon after, for Media24, Times Media Group and the Mail & Guardian to apply for media access.
The matter ended up in the Pietermaritzburg High Court and in 2016, Judge Piet Koen eventually ruled in favour of the press being allowed to be present.
For months, the hearings were repeatedly postponed until in July this year, the hearing for former assistant director at the provincial department Jayshree Pardesi eventually got underway, giving the public a glimpse into how the events around the upgrades unfolded.
Pardesi’s hearing proceeded for two days before it was adjourned to August. In August, though, it was postponed until further notice.
Several queries to the department's spokesperson Thamsanqa Mchunu regarding the hearings, have gone unanswered.
Mchunu had not responded to a request for comment on Wednesday afternoon.