“It was not a good experience, but experiences like these make you wiser and open your eyes,” said Makhado Municipality’s municipal manager, Mr Isaac Mutshinyali.

The experience that the municipal manager, in office since 3 September this year, is referring to is the criminal charge laid against him in his capacity as municipal manager of the Greater Letaba Municipality. 

Mutshinyali talked openly to the Zoutpansberger / Limpopo Mirror about the scenario that led up to the criminal charge concerning an alleged questionable approval of a R2.5 million payment. The charge had been laid by the DA at the Modjadjiskloof police station in the beginning of August. The same charge included the former CFO of Greater Letaba, Mr Elias Masiya, and the current technical director, Mr William Molokomme. Masiya left Greater Letaba last year, while Mutshinyali left in May this year and Molokomme was reappointed for another five years.

The investigation will take its course. “Let them investigate; that is fine. Luckily, I have all my documentation in place. I don’t really think there is a case, but it dented my name, unfortunately,” Mutshinyali said.

Mutshinyali described his view of the preceding circumstances. The owner of a company who was awarded the tender of repairing and rebuilding streets in Modjadjiskloof never appeared in person at the municipality but sent an employee to be the face of the company. The first claim went through to the correct account of the owner. In the meantime, this employee was no longer working at the company but provided the municipality with the necessary forms and documentation of the owner that he was the appointed subcontractor. The second payment was made into the new account supplied by the subcontractor.

“In the meantime, the owner sued the company of the subcontractor, who subsequently got arrested. Then the owner came to the fore for the first time and brought a letter from his attorney to say that the contract was theirs. If the document by the subcontractor had been forged, then that is a matter between the contractor and subcontractor. We had paid with attached documentation; we had done it by the book,” Mutshinyali said. 

DA provincial leader Jacques Smalle said that the payment to the former employee of Star Mill Developers was made “without proper checks, apparently when this employee had merely made a claim to the municipality that the tender was theirs. The Municipal Finance Management Act makes it clear that it is an offence under section 173 for any official to spend any money belonging to the municipality, either negligently or in an unauthorised manner. The police must now probe how a person who never had any contractual tender agreement with the municipality ended up being paid millions of rand,” Smalle said.

The former municipal manager of the Makhado Municipality, Mr Shadrack Tshikalange, similarly left with criminal charges hanging over his head.