A senior official from the ANC-run Umdoni local municipality in southern KwaZulu-Natal has filed an urgent application with the Pietermaritzburg High Court to halt and later set aside a disciplinary hearing, which he claims is legally flawed.
Bongani Richard Ntshebesha, the General Manager for Community Services, argues that Municipal Manager West Gumede and the council have subjected him to unlawful disciplinary proceedings, violating his labour and constitutional rights.
He further argued in the court papers that the persistence by Gumede and others with the unlawful disciplinary proceedings has had a direct impact on his livelihood, including the potential to affect his employment status or conditions thereof, as I could end up being dismissed or even be subjected to other disciplinary sanctions that would not be warranted given the unlawfulness of the ongoing disciplinary proceedings.
Ntshebesha’s troubles started in October last year when he was accused of being involved in the irregular appointment of a general worker at the municipality’s Pennington Library, and of having irregularly appointed an administrative clerk to the position of acting manager within the disaster management section.
He said after he was suspended without being told what purpose would be served by doing so.
“It has since come to my knowledge, shocking and irregular as it is, that on 06 October 2025, the municipal council took a resolution to appoint an independent investigator to investigate into the allegations of misconduct levelled against me prior to actually delivering a notice of intention to suspend me from duty and prior to receiving my written representations thereto.
“The said appointment letter of 06 October 2025, thereby appointing the law firm Garlicke and Bousfield as independent investigators in respect of the allegations of misconduct levelled against me. On the 3rd of November 2025, the municipal council, instead of receiving a final independent investigator’s report as was due on 05 November 2025, took a resolution to extend the scope of the independent investigator’s mandate by resolving that the said independent investigator, appointed by the resolution of 06 October 2025, was to now investigate further allegations of misconduct against me,” he says in the court papers.
He argues that on November 3, 2025, the municipal council, instead of receiving a final independent investigator’s report as was due on 05 November 2025, took a resolution to extend the scope of the independent investigator’s mandate by resolving that the said independent investigator, appointed by the resolution of 06 October 2025, was to now investigate further allegations of misconduct against him and that is unlawful.
“Ultimately, there was no final report tabled by the independent investigator either on the 03rd of November 2025 before the council meeting or on the 05th of November 2025, which was the last day on which the final report was to be submitted, in compliance with the 30 days deadline outlined in the Local Government: Disciplinary Regulations for Senior Management, 2010, promulgated in terms of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000.”
Moreover, he argued that the extension of the scope of the independent investigator’s mandate meant that the independent investigator would now have to produce either a final first report and a final second report, or a “consolidated” final report.”
