The former head of the South African Chamber of Business (SACOB), Kevin Wakeford, has been appointed acting chief executive officer of the Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC), the board and Economic Affairs MEC Andre de Wet announced.

Wakeford’s appointment comes in the wake of the ECDC board’s decision to suspend its CEO, Mcebisi Jonas, its chief financial officer, John Cerff, and its senior head of the corporation’s property division, Don Maclean.

Wakeford, a Port Elizabeth businessman, took up office yesterday morning and had a meeting with all the ECDC staff at the corporation’s head office in East London.

Board member Naledi Burwana-Bisiwe said the board’s disciplinary committee felt it had “sufficient reason” to suspend the three senior officials on full pay until the finalisation of an investigation into the operations of the ECDC.

Wakeford said the Auditor-General and the police’s serious economic crimes unit were now operating from the ECDC offices and he hoped for a speedy resolution to the probe.

“We are hoping it will take weeks rather than months to finalise.”

Wakeford said his appointment was as a governor rather than a chief executive, to ensure there is “an element of certainty and confidence in the performance of the ECDC.”

His appointment would be an initial period of 90 days or until the situation that led to the suspension of the CEO has been sorted out.

Wakeford said his other business commitments, seats on the boards of the metal industries or mining sector pension funds as well as his board membership of Growth Africa, would not be affected by his temporary post.

He is conversant with a lot of the work done by the ECDC as he was one of the people instrumental in setting up the Coega Development Corporation, which is one of the ECDC’s biggest projects.

Wakeford said his brief was to see that the ECDC got back to work as quickly as possible, as there had been delays in some of its operations in the past three weeks.

At his meeting with staff yesterday he had requested that heads of each department let him know the state of their departments by this morning.

De Wet said that the past three weeks had been trying and that there was a perception that things at the ECDC had ground to a halt. But he emphasised that it was “business as usual” for the provincial parastatal.

Wakeford would be living in East London for the duration of his temporary appointment.