Thami Hlongwa
Days after the Umgeni Water Amanzi board was reappointed in terms of a court order, the water reticulation entity’s acting chief executive officer, Sandile Dube, was forced to leave a handover meeting with the entity’s new leadership after receiving death threats.
Dube, Magasela Mzobe — the chairperson of the interim board that had been appointed to replace the Umgeni board dissolved by the then water and sanitation minister, Lindiwe Sisulu — and Umgeni audit executive Nontokozo Makhubo are understood to have received death threats related to forensic audits into procurement corruption commissioned last year.
The reports are understood to implicate nearly 20 current and former staff members — some of them at executive level — and were due to be actioned by the interim board shortly before the court order reinstating the old board was issued late last month.
Dube has since been unable to meet with the board in person because of the security threat and has instead been forced to hold virtual discussions with the leadership of Umgeni, which is responsible for providing water to municipalities throughout KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Easter Cape.
The threats against Dube, who was appointed earlier this year after serving as operations head for Umgeni, come as the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) wraps up two investigations into massive procurement corruption at the troubled water entity involving companies subcontracting from IT giant EoH Mthombo.
Umgeni had commissioned its own forensic audit pinto the transactions – including a R54 million social facilitation and a R81 million security assessment contract – awarded to companies owned by murdered information technology tenderpreneur Sibonelo Shinga during the tenure of former chief executive Thami Hlongwa.
Hlongwa resigned shortly before the report into contracts awarded to companies belonging to Shinga was to be tabled by the board, which was dissolved last June by Sisulu.
Hlongwa has been in hiding since the murder of Shinga.
The chief financial officer who served under Hlongwa, Nomalungelo Mkhize, and who had replaced him as acting chief executive also resigned recently, with sources at the entity claiming she had also received threats that she would be killed.
Two sources with intimate knowledge of the matter said that Dube was forced to leave a handover meeting with the incoming board at an Umhlanga hotel last week after he received a direct threat against his life.
“The handover meeting between Dube and the board had just begun when he said he had received a death threat. He had to leave there and then. Since then he has only communicated with the board by Zoom and is afraid to come to the office,” the source said.
“He also told the board the SIU had informed him that his life was in danger.”
“This is a very worrisome situation. There is already one person dead. Thami (Hlongwa) has been underground for months because somebody tried to kill him. Now we have a chief executive who can’t come to work because people want to kill him,” the source said.
“There are a whole lot of reports that need to be handed over to the new board for action and that hasn’t happened as yet. The new board is going to have to go through every decision of the last 14 months and decide if they should approve it. They are also going to have to look at all the forensic reports and decide what to do,” the source said.
The second source said that Dube, Makubo and Mzobe had all opened up cases with the SAPS over the threats on their lives, which were related to the corruption investigations. A number of security threats have also been detected at Mzobe’s Newcastle home.
“All have been getting death threats. They have case numbers. This is getting out of hand now. People’s lives are now at risk,” the source said.
Umgeni said in a statement last week that the appointment of the incoming board had been confirmed by cabinet and would “begin exercising its governance oversight role as accounting authority with immediate effect.”
Spokesperson Shami Harichunder said that he would only be able to comment on recommendations of the forensic audit commissioned by the outgoing board once a handover with the new board had been completed.
Harichunder confirmed that Dube had submitted an affidavit to police after being informed by the Hawks that his life “could be in danger” over a forensic investigation which he had commissioned while acting CEO.
Dube had also been “advised separately to ensure he has personal security due to the nature of some of the findings and parties allegedly implicated,”’ Harichunder said
Mzobe declined to comment.
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