Mukoni T Ratshitanga
South African Housing Trust chair Reverend Frank Chikane has ordered a forensic audit into corruption allegations levelled against the trust’s subsidiary, Khayalethu Home Loans (KHL).
The audit was prompted by a Mail & Guardian report last week in which KHL management was accused of paying a consultant for work he had not done. Central to the allegations is a claim that KHL paid more than R300 000 for one year’s tenure to David Moshoeshoe, a consultant and business manager of a company owned by KHL director Siza Khampepe.
According to his letter of appointment, Moshoeshoe’s DM Development Consultants was hired to consult “in the areas of [bond] payment normalisation and Masakhane”. But KHL staffers and communities which Moshoeshoe claims to have consulted flatly deny they ever met him or his employees.
Chikane said this week the trust was committed to “sound corporate governance policies [and] would not allow any mismanagement of any kind within its organisation”.
Calls for an inquiry at KHL first emerged two years ago when the organisation’s senior black managers claimed, in an anonymous document, that staffers were forming consultancies which were co-managed by themselves, friends and relatives.
The document was presented to Chikane by 16 members of the Black Lawyers Association, but he allegedly rejected it on grounds of its anonymity. Chikane denied this last week.