OPINION - The break-in at the home of Mbuso Ngcobo, head of eThekwini Municipality’s City Integrity and Investigations Unit (CIIU) and the theft of boxes of tender documents from municipal premises are worrisome events which indicate the lengths people will go to protect ill-gotten gains or to gain an advantage.
Fortunately Ngcobo was not harmed in the incident.
He and his unit are responsible for investigating fraud and corruption within the municipality, and for the dismissal of a number of employees.
Evidently his comment last week that investigators risked their lives in doing their jobs was not hyperbole.
However, we would like more information on the employees dismissed, their transgressions and details of criminal charges laid.
We would also like to know how the boxes of tenders were taken, in broad daylight, from under the noses of municipal employees. The incident happened on Friday, but the footage from security cameras had apparently not been viewed on Monday, the fourth day after the incident, so we don’t know how many were involved or who they were.
Is it stretching the bounds of coincidence too much to ask if the two incidents - the house of a man investigating tender fraud gets broken into two days after boxes of tenders are stolen - are linked?
We suggest that some of the R32 million saved by Ngcobo’s unit be used to bolster its efforts.
Evidently someone is not too happy with its successes.