South Africa’s Ekurhuleni Mayor, Mzwandile Masina Denies Any Personal Relationship with LTE’s Mr. Thulani Majola in Relation to City Contracts

In a conversation with Ekurhuleni Mayor, Councillor Zwandile Masina about a tender that was jointly awarded to LTE Consulting and Setheo Engineering, the Mayor categorically denied any personal knowledge of the dynamics of this project and any personal relationship with Mr. Majola.

LTE Pty Limited, which is linked to Mr. Thulani Majola, and another company called Setheo Engineering were jointly awarded a tender to refurbish the Saambou Building in Germiston but LTE is said to have hijacked the entire project.

A progress report that is in the possession of this publication shows that work is already underway but the other part to the contract expressed shock on the fact that the project is being carried out without its participation.

“Notwithstanding, it is astounding that Setheo is still reflected as party to the project,” said a Setheo representative.

He also said: “I can also confirm that it was a mandatory requirement that the provider of contracting services needed to have the correct CIDB grading which LTE does not possess. It is, therefore, that LTE can purport to be the principal driver of what is a refurbishment project as a consulting company.”

The comments by the other contracting party shows that LTE is now solely providing both consulting and contracting services with parties who were not part of the bidding process.

When asked whether he was aware of the fact that although the contract was awarded to a joint venture arrangement involving two legal entities and yet the implementation of the project has been done under the sole direction of LTE, Mayor Masina said:

“If you want to ask anything about projects in the City, you call the City Manager. I run politics in Ekurhuleni and not projects, so I don’t know anything about projects. Contact the City Manager.

I am not involved in anything and I don’t understand what are personal relationships has to do with Ekurhuleni. If you want to know anything about projects of the City, the City Manager is there, the CFO is there.”

Mr. Majola is widely known as a donor to ANC, the ruling party but the Mayor boldly distanced himself from such knowledge by saying: “Secondly I’m not elected as Treasurer, you can call the ANC person responsible for fundraising to check if they have donation from Mr Majola and LTE.”

This paper then clarified to Mayor Masina that the point of seeking a comment on his personal relationship with Mr Majola is based on various media reports of Mr Majola’s use of political connectedness to win tenders in exchange for donations to political parties.

With respect to the investigations on whether LTE managed to hijack the contract through any close personal relationship with Ekurhuleni politicians, the Mayor said “I have no personal relationship with Mr Majola nor I have any knowledge of his contracts in the city.  All other stories abt his dealing I advise you to talk to him directly as I’m not involved.”

LTE is said to have been paid a substantial amount estimated at over R100 million on this project by the City of Erkhuruleni.

Against a backdrop of state capture allegations in which politicians have been fingered for actively interfering with public procurement processes, he said: “I’ve told you categorically that no politician including myself is involved in tenders hence I told you to speak to CM or CFO.”

He further highlighted that LTE started working with the City since 2010 and questioned whether this paper had asked previous mayors to respond on such relationships as well.

According to the Ekurhuleni website, “the Executive Mayor is at the centre of the system of governance since executive powers are vested in him by the council to manage the daily affairs of the city.

This means that he has overarching strategic and political responsibility. The legislative arm of the council has oversight over business of the executive.

The Executive Mayor has the responsibility of appointing a Leader of Government business and to sub delegate powers and responsibilities to the MMCs who are responsible for monitoring and evaluating the performance of the heads of departments for which they are responsible.

Over and above these responsibilities, the Executive Mayor also establishes Mayoral Committee Clusters” – https://www.ekurhuleni.gov.za/council/council.html