Pretoria - Executive mayor Stevens Mokgalapa yesterday made an about-turn on his call for the establishment of a Financial Misconduct Board to probe cases of misconduct involving officials implicated in the GladAfrica saga.
He made known his change of heart at an ordinary council sitting at Sammy Marks Council Chamber, where he tabled a report requesting council to support the termination of the City’s contract with GladAfrica in June.
His scrapping of the board formation was at variance with his announcement on Monday when he wanted implicated officials to be under further investigations. Mokgalapa had said the idea was to enable the board to “consider all material that led to the conclusion of the GladAfrica contract”.
According to him, the board was to be tasked with making recommendations on steps to deal with officials implicated in the tender irregularities.
“This includes, but is not limited to, the involvement of the City manager (Dr Moeketsi Mosola) in all matters related to GladAfrica,” he said on Monday. In addition, he told councillors that he would erase from his report a recommendation that sought to address an impasse between Mosola and council over the Bowman report into the same matter.
The ANC shot down the suggestion for the parties to officially break up in June. ANC chief whip Aaron Maluleka criticised the approach by Mokgalapa, saying the City was supposed to have bitten the bullet by terminating the contract immediately and geared itself for a legal battle.
He also said the disclosure that almost R500million had been paid to GladAfrica since its contract was not supposed to be part of the mayor’s report, but the finance department.
Mokgalapa also backtracked on the inclusion of a statement that read that it was anticipated that at the end of the 2018/19 financial year an additional R250m would be incurred.
Last month the Auditor-General made adverse findings against the awarding of the contract, declaring it to be irregular.
The ANC further slammed a proposal by Mokgalapa for council to instruct Mosola to appoint another service provider to take over the work initially granted to GladAfrica. The contract in question was to assist the City with the roll-out of infrastructure projects valued at R12billion.