Eastern Cape minister of agriculture Max Mamase resigned last Tuesday as a high-level investigation into a dodgy R16-million empowerment deal bankrolled by his department closed in on him.
Mamase announced his resignation on the same day that a list of questions about his involvement in two dubious business deals arrived at his office from the joint anti-corruption task team (Jactt), an elite squad of investigators from the South African Police Service and the National Prosecuting Authority, deployed to the province.
In October last year the Mail & Guardian revealed that Mamase may have received kickbacks in the form of bond payments for his luxury East London house from a property development company called Parch Properties 17. Norman Benjamin, a wealthy farm owner in the Addo district near Port Elizabeth, and his accountant, Emiliya Peneva, are directors.
Benjamin is part of an agricultural empowerment deal irregularly financed by Mamase’s department. Mamase rode roughshod over a series of provincial finance regulations and ordered his department to fund the acquisition of a 49% share of Benjamin’s farms by an empowerment trust called Kangela. The farms are valued at R16-million. The shares for just less than half that value would be given to 44 of Benjamin’s employees, with a view to developing them as future citrus farmers. However, Mamase’s department ultimately transferred R15,68-million to make this possible, which would mean it paid — through Uvimba, a parastatal that provides micro-financing to emerging farmers — nearly double what the shares are worth.
Jactt has been probing the empowerment deal and the possibility that Mamase’s home is being financed by Benjamin. The M&G understands that Mamase’s arrest is imminent.
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 last year deposited by Peneva.
Moerane-Mamase said these payments were for occupational rent on another building owned by Quickvest 54, which Parch Properties 17 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 Mamases’ home. The acting CEO of the Buffalo City Development Agency, Peter King, as well as the Buffalo City mayor, Sindisile Maclean, have told the M&G that they had never heard of Parch Properties, Peneva or Benjamin.
The M&G understands that since October last year no more payments have been made from Parch Properties to Quickvest 54. The M&G also understands that Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela had put pressure on Mamase to resign to avoid the embarrassment of an arrest while he was in office. It is common knowledge that Mamase and Balindlela are political allies. A month after Mamase was exposed, Balindlela stopped an investigation by the provincial legislature into the affair, claiming it must await a provincial Cabinet probe.
On January 11 the Democratic Alliance’s provincial leader, Athol Trollip, sent Balindlela questions for written reply asking whether her investigation into Mamase, which appeared to have been blacked out, was under way. Under the standing rules of the legislature, a premier must reply to such questions within 10 days. Trollip has received no reply from Balindlela, and provincial government spokesperson Phila Ngqumba said: ”I don’t think she instituted an investigation.”
Mamase put the phone down on the M&G and would not respond to repeated messages to contact the newspaper. He told The Daily Dispatch that his resignation was unrelated to the Jactt investigation. ”The future is beyond Bisho. There are areas I want to go, but I don’t want to mention them at the moment.”
Mamase’s attorney, Ed Murray, said: ”I am going to be consulting with my client [about the questions sent from Jactt] and decisions will be taken but the matter is currently sub judice.”
Following the M&G exposÃ