Former police minister Bheki Cele. (Paul Botes)
Ten years ago Mbuyiseli Madlanga, now one of the most respected judges at the constitutional court, was the evidence leader of a board of inquiry investigating the irregular leasing of buildings in Pretoria and Durban for police accommodation at a highly inflated price.
Bheki Cele was the suspended national commissioner trying and seemingly failing to refute allegations that he had personally intervened to ensure the contract worth R1.67-billion went to Roux Property Fund. It was not the first or last time Cele would face allegations of fiddling tenders, but lived to fight another day.
Madlanga said the evidence showed that although the commissioner had signed a document authorising the rental of 21 000 square metres of space, he subsequently allowed the requirements to be changed to 25 000 square metres after a meeting with Roux Shabangu, in an apparent bid to ensure that the tender was tailor-made for one of the businessman’s properties in downtown Pretoria.
The rental market value for the property was about R40 a square metre, yet the police procured it for 10 years at R135 a square metre. The deal included the Transnet Towers building in Durban, also part of Shabangu’s portfolio.
“General Cele wanted that particular building [Sanlam Middestad] to be procured for the police. He identified the building and went ahead to become an active participant in the leasing,” said Madlanga.
“If he seriously has this attitude with regards to supply chain management, with all the respect that is due to him, we submit that he is a menace when it comes to compliance with the Public Finance Management Act [PFMA] and treasury regulations.”
He told the inquiry that Cele had tried to dissimulate his prior relationship with Shabangu, and had been deliberately “cagey” when he told then deputy commissioner Hamilton Hlela that someone would call him to discuss the procurement of police headquarters and failed to disclose that it was Shabangu.
The relationship made the commissioner “compliant to all things Shabangu said” and constituted an undeclared conflict of interest.
Madlanga contended that Cele was guilty of misconduct, but that his breach of the PFMA alone warranted his removal from office. This is what the board of inquiry ultimately recommended, along with calling for a criminal investigation to establish why the deal proceeded as it did.
The board of inquiry was appointed by then president Jacob Zuma to establish whether Cele had acted corruptly and dishonestly, but it was viewed by some as an unnecessary step, designed to buy the president time after then public protector Thuli Madonsela had reached a similar conclusion.
She said the commissioner’s attempts to distance himself from the deal were not credible because he had made sure — with an order issued in September 2009 — that all tenders worth more than R500 000 were handled directly by his office and found that he had breached the Constitution, the PFMA, treasury regulations and supply chain management rules and policies.
She recommended that appropriate action be taken but it was only after the board of inquiry pronounced itself that Zuma fired the man who had been his brother in arms in the war zone of KwaZulu-Natal politics since the 1980s. Cele then turned to the Pretoria high court to challenge the board’s findings, as well as the decision to fire him.
In an affidavit to the court, Zuma said anything short of firing the commissioner would have been inappropriate, and denied Cele’s claim that there was an ulterior motive for the move.
It took seven years, but Cele was eventually vindicated in court. In 2019, the high court invalidated his dismissal, finding that it was “irrational, biased, lacked credence and defied logic”. It did not order his reinstatement as police commissioner.
By then he was minister of police, appointed in February 2018 by new President Cyril Ramaphosa when he named his first cabinet. Cele had returned to government four years earlier as deputy minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
In 2020, Durban businessman Toshan Panday asked why Cele was not arrested alongside himself, his family members and former police top brass, among them Colonel Navin Madhoe, in the case in which they face 275 charges of fraud, theft and racketeering relating to rigged logistics contracts signed with the police in the run-up to the 2010 Fifa World Cup hosted by South Africa.
Panday claims Cele, as commissioner, approved the contract awarded to his company, Goldcoast Trading, to provide accommodation for police officers brought into the province for the tournament. Cele’s office denied he played any role.
Panday, a business associate of Zuma’s son Edward, was investigated by former KwaZulu-Natal head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) Johan Booysen. Booysen believes the trumped-up charges brought against him and 26 other officers in the Cato Manor hit squad debacle was payback for investigating an ally of the president and his family.
Cele is believed to have had close ties to Booysen and supported him during his court appearances, in what some saw as a sign that distance was setting in between him and Zuma, shortly before the president fired him at the recommendation of the board of inquiry.
Two years ago, a former crime intelligence official identified as Colonel Dhanajaya Naidoo told the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture that Cele was among politicians who had strong-armed law enforcement agencies to turn a blind eye to their wrongdoing.
(Graphics by John McCann/M&G)
The commission heard that while Cele was still member of the executive council for transport in KwaZulu-Natal, he awarded contracts to Panganathan “Timmy” Marimuthu, a former policeman implicated in drug trafficking who Naidoo claimed later helped buy Cele’s support for crime intelligence chief financial officer Solly Lazarus.
Lazarus was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2020 for corruption. According to the testimony to the commission, he supplied proof of how the State Security Agency paid for upgrades to former police minister Nathi Mthethwa’s home in 2010 to Cele “to be used in his disputes with the then minister to ensure that the then minister could not act against him”.
The Zondo report recommended that all investigations into crime intelligence be allowed to proceed unhindered.
The commission raised serious concerns that the disarray in intelligence structures robbed the state of adequate forewarning of the deadly unrest that broke out in response to Zuma’s arrest for contempt of court in July last year. Cele, in his testimony to the South African Human Rights Commission about the violence, broke ranks with cabinet colleagues and then national police commissioner Khehla Sitole.
He claimed he was left in the dark by both state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo and Sitole, skewering the latter with the words: “I’m sure some deliberate decision was taken not to brief in terms of crime intelligence.”
Sitole was forced out in February, while Cele remains, seemingly immune to sanction for abysmal crime statistics. Personally confronted about poor policing in Cape Town’s townships this week, he lost self-control and screamed at Ian Cameron, of Action Society, to “shut up” before attempting to order his arrest.
Responding to cold facts with unbecoming bluster is vintage Cele. The reason for his survival has little to do with his effectiveness as a minister but can be found in his home province’s ability to determine power struggles in the ruling ANC.
With Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu losing his influence in KwaZulu-Natal, Ramaphosa has no one else who can help deliver the province when he stands for re-election at the ANC’s national conference in December.
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