An IT group close to the Inkatha Freedom Party has been implicated in a web of corruption spanning the outsourcing of a university’s IT functions and a controversial tender to monitor ”corner shop” gambling machines in KwaZulu-Natal.
At Gauteng’s now-disbanded Vista University, the group, by its own admission, paid ”commission” of more than R100 000 to the university’s then IT director, and another R30 000 to Reuben Mbuli, the university’s then administrative chief. Mbuli is now a senior investigator with the Office of the Public Protector.
In KwaZulu-Natal a related company, KwaZulu CMS, won a tender to electronically monitor limited payout gambling machines in a contract rushed through by the IFP-led provincial government just before the April 2004 elections.
In July that year the deal was suspended on the instruction of the new African National Congress Premier, S’bu Ndebele, but the Provincial Gambling Board now faces a R137-million damages claim from KwaZulu CMS.
However, the evidence emerging from the Vista case suggests KwaZulu CMS should never have passed a probity check to win the contract in the first place. Either no proper investigation was done by the gambling board, or political considerations overrode any serious scrutiny of the companies and individuals behind the bid.
In particular, there is evidence that a central figure behind KwaZulu CMS, Jim Miller, paid kickbacks at Vista while the university outsourced about R33-million worth of IT work to it.
Of critical importance in the disclosures has been amateur detective work by former Vista staff, who are furious at the way their university was ripped off. But much of the information followed up by the Mail & Guardian is also contained in court records easily accessible to the gambling board.
The evidence shows that individuals linked to the IFP began planning to secure the KwaZulu-Natal monitoring contract as early as 1997 and that, together with Miller, they conspired to hide the political links of the vehicle formed to achieve this, a company called DSE Technologies.
While DSE Technologies, and eventually its successor KwaZulu CMS, was pursuing the KwaZulu-Natal contract, IFP adviser and legal troubleshooter Mario Ambrosini intervened to ensure the gambling board signed the contract.
Who will guard the guardians?
Reuben Mbuli is a senior investigator in the Office of the Public Protector, the official guardian of the country’s morals. But he stands accused of taking tens of thousands in backhanders.
Mbuli was chief administrator of the now-disbanded Vista in 2000 when Jim Miller’s companies performed multimillion-rand outsourced IT contracts for the university. During that time Miller, by his own admission to a forensic investigator, paid R30 000 to Mbuli. Copies of bank deposit slips in the Mail & Guardian’s possession suggest that after this admission, the payments — each time a round R10 000 — continued to a possible total of R70 000.
But this was not the only evidence of an improper relationship between the two men. In March 2002, when Miller was chasing the KwaZulu-Natal contract to be issued by the provincial gambling board, Mbuli applied — unsuccessfully — for membership of that board.
Mbuli’s application letter appears to have been drafted with the help of Miller, as Vista staff later found several versions of it faxed to Mbuli from Miller’s fax machine.
Miller’s admission to the forensic investigator also detailed more than R100 000 in payments to, and expenses on behalf of Saint Mofokeng, Vista’s then IT director. Mofokeng seems to have gone to ground and could not be traced.
Mbuli’s career at Vista came to an end in December 2003 after then-acting vice-chancellor Sipho Seepe gave the go-ahead to one of his deputies, Hartmuth Winkler, to probe rumours. Seepe told the M&G that the university council refused to renew Mbuli’s contract and withheld his severance pay.
A Public Protector source told the M&G that Mbuli was there on ”temporary” contract; and because of that had not been interviewed or had his background checked. It was envisaged that he would help out for three months, but he has been there for a year.
Mbuli this week responded that the payments received from Miller were a ”retainer” for outside legal work he had done for Miller, who ”wanted legal advice on various issues”. He said this advice wason issues ”unrelated” to Miller’s companies’ contracts with the university.
He said his leaving the university in December 2003 was the result of a dispute with the university because he had ”not declared” Miller’s payments, but argued he need not have declared them as there had been no clear policy on this.
A settlement was signed that included him leaving but receiving six months’ severance pay. The university stopped this in February 2004, and he is taking legal action.
He said no conflict of interest arose with his gambling board application as he did not get the position in the end.