SIU reduces fees to probe Bay's use of Mandela funeral funds

Efforts by officials and the DA in Nelson Mandela Bay to get the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) to reduce its investigation costs have paid off.

The fees for a probe into money spent by the Bay Municipality on the funeral of former president Nelson Mandela has dropped from R4,2m to R435 432,40.

It comes after DA councillor Retief Odendaal wrote to the SIU requesting that the fees be reduced.

The municipality spent R6.23m on the provincial memorial service for the former statesman at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.

It is one of eight institutions in the Eastern Cape to be investigated by the unit for the allocation of money and procuring of goods and services related to the 2013 funeral.

Council on December 4 agreed that it would find money to the tune of R4,2m to pay for the investigation.

However, Odendaal wrote to the SIU shortly after, saying the cash-strapped municipality could simply not afford it.

Responding to his letter, the SIU’s advocate Jan Mothibi revealed that a phone call from the city's chief operations officer Mzwakhe Clay in December had also flagged the high costs.

Mothibi wrote that at the time of giving the municipality the quote for the probe, the SIU had not been aware of the volume of documents involved.

“In December, our East London office received a call from Mr Clay who enquired about how invoices would be submitted to the municipality.

“During the phone call we advised Clay that the costs had been revised. The SIU has since revised the [costs] and the new amount reflected therein is R435 442,40, covering the work already done and outstanding investigations,” Mothibi wrote.

On Wednesday, Odendaal said he welcomed the reduction.

“I am very impressed that we got a response so speedily,” Odendaal said.

“At the end of the day we wouldn’t have wanted to incur any costs, but because of the nature of this investigation...but we didn’t have a choice and it also very important because of the extent of corruption in the province,” Odendaal said.

Odendaal said the aim was also to make residents aware of the high costs of the investigation.

“We wanted to make people aware that it would make no sense to have costs for a forensic investigation of about R4,2m which is almost the same as the original cost of the project,” Odendaal said.

“Now that we have sensitised people, we trust that the final account will be much less than initially anticipated.”

“When you are in the opposition, its a whole different ball game and we have to find other ways of making a difference. I don’t believe that when you're in the opposition you just sit on the side,” Odendaal said.

He added that he had spoken to officials who had expressed concerns over the costs.

A part of the SIU's investigation will include the procurement of goods, work by the municipality in relation to the funeral, and all payments made.

It will also probe any related unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred.

The investigation is expected to be completed by June.