Durban — The owner of the company at the centre of the school feeding scheme bungle has blamed political sabotage for his failure to deliver food items to schools in KwaZulu-Natal.
Breaking his silence on Sunday, Manzini Zungu, whose company Pacina scored the multi-million tender from the Department of Education as the main supplier, said the main reason for the non-delivery of food or enough food to schools was because of community forums which recruited some politicians in the province to sabotage his work so that he would fail, which would result in the department terminating his contract.
Zungu is a relative of AmaZulu Football Club boss Sandile Zungu and was once a director of the club, a position he has left. He said these forums were stopping trucks from delivering food.
“Our problems were the community forums that we believe have been recruited by some of the politicians to fight against us. As you would know, tenders always come with challenges at the political level,” said Zungu.
“Means to distribute were sabotaged by groups of people stopping our drivers from reaching destinations on time. However, this has been resolved and we have taken precautionary measures to ensure this is prevented from happening again.
“We have consulted various stakeholders to ensure food is available in each and every school. This has been a very difficult period in our business and we never anticipated that there was going to be violent political interference in the supply chain, which resulted in some delays that have caused uncertainties and almost eroded our people’s trust,” said Zungu.
He said the most challenging region was Zululand which became difficult to work in as these forums were blocking vehicles transporting food. As a result, some community members had taken it on themselves to collect the food as it became evident that some groups of people were determined to make the project fail.
Zungu denied accusations that he lacked capacity. He said he has enough warehouses and collections points throughout the province with Mobeni in Durban being one of the biggest distribution points. He said the food was enough and stored according to health specifications, but because trucks were no longer taking items to the collection points because of forums’ actions, perishable food was affected.
Zungu’s company was formed in 2021 but he said he had prior experience in logistics and food supply, so he had capacity to do business of this magnitude.
The problem which became a topical issue last week has prompted Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube to announce a full-scale investigation, promising serious consequences. The bungle left more than 2 million pupils hungry, which drew widespread criticism from political parties and civil society groups, which bayed for education MEC Mbali Frazer’s blood as more than 5 400 schools were affected.
The problem has also drawn the attention of national Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga who penned a letter to Frazer informing her that she was sending a head office team to investigate.
The department, however, defended the centralisation of the work and said it was cost-saving to have a main supplier compared to the previous term when suppliers were purchasing food items themselves. The department’s spokesperson, Elijah Mhlanga, said it made sense for the provincial department to appoint a main supplier since it was cheaper to buy in bulk compared to buying individually.
The idea was also supported by the ANC in the province, which said the problem may be that the main supplier was not given enough time as he was awarded the tender towards the end of last month, the financial year-end month.
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