Minister Zikalala on mission to fix 'new' shoddy border fence

During his first month in his new capacity as Minister of the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI), Mr Sihle Zikalala has already made a priority of addressing the Beitbridge Border Post saga involving the installation of the border fence between South Africa and Zimbabwe in 2020. When the fence was found to be of poor quality, this caused a lot of criticism from decision makers and the general public.

On Tuesday, 4 April, Zikalala, accompanied by Musina Mayor Godfrey Mawela, conducted a site inspection to assess the border fence, which he admitted was one of the government’s failed projects. “We are going to attend to [our] failures, but we are not going to accept wrongdoing. Where there is failure, we try to improve it, but where there is wrongdoing, people must be held accountable. The report that showed that the fence was not up to standard was correct. The Department of Public Works must implement the assessment report conducted by the government’s risk committee and Special Investigating Unit (SIU),” he said.

The DPWI is already working on the recommendations of the report.

Two contractors, namely Caledon River Properties (Pty) Ltd and Profteam CC, were awarded R40,4 million by the DPWI to erect the Beitbridge border fence, but when the erected fence started to collapse, the SIU was prompted to investigate the awarding of the contract.

Minister Zikalala believes that consequence management is the only way to build a culture of responsibility and integrity. He told the media that his department had already disciplined some of its staff members internally, but would now also deal with three other senior managers within the department.

Asked when the new fence would be installed, Zikalala said that had to be determined by the Border Management Authority (Department of Home Affairs and South African National Defence Force). “These are the departments that have to tell the DPWI what type of fence will be most suitable. Once they have done so, we can implement their recommendations,” he said.

Zikalala promised to be back again in two months to deal with the issue of the fence.

Date:06 April 2023

By: Bernard Chiguvare

Bernard Chiguvare is a Zimbabwean-born journalist. He writes mainly for the online publication, Groundup.

Read: 4850