The agricultural portfolio committee in the Eastern Cape has asked the provincial minister for agriculture, Max Mamase, to explain allegations that the bond on his R2,7-million home is partially funded by a local citrus farmer.
Last week the Mail & Guardian revealed that Mamase may have received kickbacks in the form of bond payments for his East London house from Norman Benjamin, who is part of a R16-million empowerment deal irregularly bankrolled by Mamase’s department.
Mamase rode roughshod over a series of provincial finance regulations and ordered his department to fund the acquisition of a portion of Benjamin’s farms near Port Elizabeth by an empowerment trust called Kangela. About 44 farm workers are alleged to be beneficiaries of the trust, but when the portfolio committee visited the farms recently and spoke to the workers, they said they were not aware that they were shareholders in the deal.
The provincial joint anti-corruption task team is probing the empowerment deal and the possibility that Mamase’s home is being financed by Benjamin.
Mamase co-owns the house with his wife, Neo Moerane-Mamase, the provincial minister for social development, through a company called Quickvest 54.
The M&G reported that this company received two payments of R15 000 in August and September, deposited by Benjamin’s accountant, Emiliya Peneva.
Peneva said that these payments were for the occupational rent on another building owned by Quickvest 54, which a property development company called Parch Properties 17 (of which she and Benjamin are directors) is using as office space for a project with the Buffalo City Development Agency.
However, a deed search revealed that the only building owned by Quickvest 54 is the Mamase’s home and the acting CEO of the Buffalo City Development Agency, Peter King said that he had never heard of Parch Properties, Peneva or Benjamin.
Max Mamase told the Eastern Cape Herald this week that there were tenants living in the house — a town planning company whose name he ”forgot”.
On Tuesday Neo Mamase claimed she and her husband were victims of a politically motivated witch-hunt. ”There’s a political motive … a vendetta against certain individuals.”