Paul Kirk
A favoured daughter of the African National Congress looks set to face criminal prosecution for the alleged theft of trust funds while she practised as an attorney.
Police this week told the Mail & Guardian that Durban socialite and former attorney Linda Zama could also face charges involving alleged irregularities involving both tax and Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) payments.
Zama, who numbers among her friends top ANC leaders including President Thabo Mbeki and former president Nelson Mandela was embroiled in controversy earlier this year when she featured prominently in a letter Winnie Madikizela- Mandela wrote to Deputy President Jacob Zuma. The letter accused Zama of feeding falsehoods about her to Mbeki and of spreading gossip that damaged Madikizela-Mandela’s standing with the president.
Superintendent Joe Govindsamy, the commander of the Durban police commercial crime unit, said the Office of the Provincial Director of Public Prosecutions had decided that charges would be laid against Zama. We are “simply waiting for a court date”, he said.
However, advocate Dorian Paver of the public prosecutions office told the M&G that he was still waiting to interview some potential witnesses before making a final decision on whether Zama should be prosecuted and on what charges. A clearly surprised Zama told the M&G this week that she has not been served with any legal papers.
The news of Zama’s possible prosecution comes only weeks after she began the process of being readmitted to the legal profession. She was struck off the roll of practising attorneys by the Pietermaritzburg High Court in 1998 when it was discovered that unauthorised withdrawals in excess of R500 000 had been made from trust funds under her supervision as an attorney.
During the 1998 court hearing it was also alleged that UIF and PAYE deductions made from her employees’ salaries were not always handed over in full to the authorities.
An ANC stalwart, Zama has held various high-profile and well-paid government jobs connected to party figures since being struck off the roll, including a directorship of Wozani Communications, which controversially won the contract to earlier this year to handle communications for Durban mayor Obed Mlaba, an ANC member. She has also been legal adviser to ANC KwaZulu-Natal chairperson S’bu Ndebele in his capacity as provincial MEC for transport.
These jobs have arguably enabled her to help repay a controversial personal loan the ANC gave her so that she could settle costs relating to her being struck off the roll. She used part of this loan to pay back the Attorney’s Fidelity Fund more than R500 000 by which the trust funds under her control were found to be short.
She used the remainder of the loan to pay the costs the Law Society incurred while having her struck off the roll. Natal Law Society spokesman Dave Randles confirmed these costs amounted to R230 000 and were paid by means of a cheque drawn on an ANC account.
Zama told the M&G this week she made a formal representation to the ANC asking for the loan, but that she had no idea who authorised it.
At present Zama is a co-director of Wozani Communications. Wozani charges R120 000 a month for acting as communications consultants to mayor Mlaba a sore point for the ANC’s opposition in the Durban Unicity Council. Previously the council performed this function itself and many see Wozani’s contract as unnecessary extravagance.
Wozani was given the job six months ago when the council approached three companies and asked them to bid. Despite being the most expensive of the three, Wozani won the deal.
Council records show that the other bidders were Vulindlela, which came in at R29 500 for an 84-hour month half the time Wozani puts in and Development Interface, whose bid was R99 130 for the same work Wozani does. The council records say that Vulindlela and Development Interface are fully black owned, and the council lists these companies as “affirmative business enterprises” companies that should receive priority in council contracts.
Zama’s co-director partner in Wozani is the honorary consul of Poland, Andrzej Kiepiela.
Approached for comment on Wozani’s fees, Zama asked the M&G to contact Viv McMenamin the strategic adviser to the mayor of Durban. Repeated attempts to contact McMenamin this week and last week failed.
Zama has for some time been a subject of controversy. Earlier this year Madikizela-Mandela accused her of masterminding a plot to discredit her. In a letter the M&G published verbatim in January, Madikizela-Mandela said Zama had been spreading malicious rumours about her.
Addressed to Deputy President Jacob Zuma, the letter claims that Mbeki “accused me [Madikizela-Mandela] of telling Linda Zama at Comrade Ismail Meer’s funeral that he [Mbeki] had taken Comrade Shilowa’s wife one evening and brought her back at 5am.”
The letter accuses Zama of trying to ingratiate herself with Mbeki, and says the president had apparently acted on the gossip of “a young woman [Zama] whose activities are well-known”.