OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 91.30am.
CONTROVERSIAL playwright Mbongeni Ngema’s estate was sequestrated in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Thursday in the wake the Sarafina II Aids play debacle.
The sequestration follows legal action by the Heath Special Investigation Unit in its continued attempts to to recover some R14-million in taxpayers’ money spent on the play, which was to have raised awareness of HIV/Aids among youth, but was only presented twice before being canned amid a political storm. The Heath unit is investigating how more than R10-million of Health Department funds were used by Ngema and his company Committed Artists.
The sequestration application was launched by Pietermaritzburg businessman Martin Lloyd Flavell, representing the company Hampden Road Investments. Flavell claimed Ngema owes his company R73000. He applied for personal sequestration because court judgments have already been made in respect of Ngema’s R700000 property in Gillitts, and against Committed Artists. The Heath unit has already seized assets worth about R4-million from Committed Artists.
Sarafina II caused a political storm in 1996 after it was discovered that the Health Department financed the play without going through proper procedures. The play was initially funded with European Union aid but, when the controversy became public, the Health Department was forced to finance the play out of its own budget.
Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma was accused of squandering public funds over the play, with opposition parties questioning how R14,2-million was secretly spent with no apparent return. Zuma was grilled by the parliamentary portfolio committee on health about the secrecy surrounding the funding of the play. Olive Shisana, the Health Department Director General at the time, became the scapegoat for the affair and was fired by Zuma last year.