Times Of Swaziland: SPTC’S CHARLES  NDLOVU ACQUITTED

SPTC’S CHARLES  NDLOVU ACQUITTED
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BY MBONGISENI NDZIMANDZE  on 15/01/2016 00:59:00


MBABANE – Swaziland Post and Telecommunications Corporation (SPTC) Senior
Manager Sales and Marketing Charles Ndlovu has been acquitted.
Ndlovu has been found not guilty on all the three charges he was facing.
He was charged with dishonesty, dereliction of duty and negligence.
All the charges, which Ndlovu described as hideous, emanated from an article
which appeared in the Times of Swaziland on October 12, 2015.
The article was about the Swazi Telecom Charity Cup tournament voting process,
and it was alleged that confidential documents had been leaked to the media,
leading to the article being published.
Some of the leaked documents included those that related to legal agreements
SPTC had with the four local soccer teams which received loan advances from the
corporation during the voting process.
Ndlovu’s disciplinary hearing was chaired by Mbabane lawyer Muzi Simelane,
while the former was represented by Masina Ndlovu Attorneys. Robinson Bertram
represented SPTC.
In his closing submissions, Ndlovu denied that the department of Sales and
Marketing, which he heads, had the sole custody, care and control of the
contentious documents, to the exclusion of other documents within the
corporation.
Ndlovu submitted that one of the witnesses, Mandla Hlophe, whom he described as
evasive in his response, alluded to the fact that the implicated four Premier
League teams were in possession of copies of their own legal contracts binding
them to be indebted to SPTC.
In his ruling in the count of gross dishonesty, the chairman stated that he did
not find that the accused employee (Ndlovu) was grossly dishonest in his
response.