Seven Years After Her Arrest, Zandile Gumede's R320m Trial Is Still Stuck

One accused sat in his car in the court parking lot, a moon boot on his leg and crutches beside him. Another was at a doctor's rooms where, by 11am, the doctor had not arrived.

Inside the Durban High Court on Tuesday, the other 20 accused waited. So did the judge, and so did a city that has waited since May 2019.

By its second day, the year's last sitting of the R320 million Durban Solid Waste tender trial had fallen apart. The case against former eThekwini mayor Zandile Gumede and 21 co-accused has now outlasted the council term in which the alleged crimes took place and the one that followed.

Gumede has consistently denied wrongdoing. Nothing against any accused has been proven.

How Tuesday went

Stomach trouble kept accused number seven, Sduduzo Khuzwayo, away, and Judge Sharmaine Balton's view was that he should have reported to court before going to a doctor. She issued a warrant for his arrest and stayed it until Friday.

Bhekokwakhe Phewa has still not recovered from a fall off the roof of his home in September, and Balton held that the hearing could not go ahead in his absence. That same fall ended the September sitting early.

Prosecutor Reshma Athmaram plans to subpoena Phewa's doctors for Friday, to establish his injuries and medication and to test whether he can follow proceedings by video link, an arrangement other accused have already used.

Balton's patience was visibly thin. Her warning to the dock, as reported by The Mercury: "Ensure your co-accused are here; otherwise we are going to sit here forever."

What the state says happened

The allegations go back a decade. A 2013 contract under which 27 suppliers topped up the city's refuse-collection capacity was due to lapse in 2016 and had to be replaced.

Prosecutors say the 22 accused bent the tender process so that four chosen service providers won the work. On the state's version, a waste contract worth R45 million swelled to R320 million in 18 months.

The indictment puts Gumede's alleged share at R2,881,350 in kickbacks, received from January 2017 to July 2019. Opening the state's case in March 2023, prosecutor Hazel Siramen called her the "principal controller of the enterprise".

That indictment ran to 324 pages and 2,786 charges when it was handed over in 2021.

A calendar of delay

The timeline is the story.

Gumede was arrested in May 2019, while she was still mayor. The first scheduled trial day, in July 2022, was postponed because several co-accused could not pay for lawyers. The prosecution's opening address was only delivered on 6 March 2023.

In November 2025 Athmaram told the court the trial was still in its early stages, with more witnesses to come.

Then came 2026. A day was lost in June when one accused fell ill, and another was excused for a traditional cleansing ritual. September ended with the fall from the roof. November ended in the parking lot.

Much of the court's time this year has gone to a trial-within-a-trial, a hearing on whether a piece of evidence may be used at all. In this one, former municipal manager Sipho Nzuza's lawyers are contesting how the Hawks seized his cellphone.

The accused moves on. The case does not

While the trial stood still, Gumede's political career did not. She joined the MK Party during her time under the ANC's step-aside rule and is now its deputy provincial convenor. After the party's strong showing in KwaZulu-Natal's local elections, she says she will focus on "groundwork".

She is entitled to. The step-aside rule was the ANC's own; no court has barred her from politics, and she has not been convicted of anything.

But the Durban case is not alone. In Johannesburg, former Crime Intelligence head Richard Mdluli is on trial over the alleged abuse of a police secret service account from 2008 to 2012, at least 14 years ago. His trial was delayed again this week, with his ill health cited, and resumes on 16 November. He has pleaded not guilty.

In both cases the delays have lawful causes: illness, injury, the right to a lawyer, the right to challenge evidence. No single postponement is improper. Together they produce a system in which a major corruption trial can run longer than a mayor's term of office.

The Durban trial is expected back in court on Friday. If the doctors testify and the warrant falls away, it will have used the last days of its seventh year since the arrest to decide whether an accused can follow his own trial from home.