The African National Congress’s (ANC) Western Cape secretary, Mcebisi Skwatsha, used his former position as a provincial minister for transport and public works to steer a lucrative land deal to business people close to the ruling party, forensic investigators and a provincial government disciplinary hearing have concluded.
The battle over a 2,4ha tract of land in fashionable Tamboerskloof, close to central Cape Town, draws in many of the key players in the contest that has split the ANC in the province into factions aligned either with Skwatsha or Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool.
The documentary record obtained by the Mail & Guardian, which includes a draft forensic report, court papers and records from the disciplinary hearing, makes it clear that Skwatsha intervened with provincial officials, who appear to have committed fraud in an effort to ensure that the tender was awarded to a consortium known as Rowmoor Investments 490.
Rowmoor includes among its directors Fezile Calana, a former ANC employee; Shaun Rai, a businessperson aligned with Rasool’s opponents in several politically sensitive empowerment battles; and Nombeka Mlambo, who has since fallen out with Rai.
A chief director in the transport and public works department has been sacked over the affair already and two more disciplinary hearings still have to take place.
Skwatsha resigned his provincial cabinet post in July 2005.
Despite all this, Rowmoor recently succeeded in securing the land. Indeed, the company paid a R6-million deposit on the R60-million purchase price shortly after the April 2007 sacking of James Slabbert, the province’s assistant executive manager of property management, for his role in implementing Skwatsha’s instructions.
Between the original 2003 decision to advertise sports fields, belonging to Van Riebeek High School, for sale and the conclusion of the deal with Rowmoor, a tangled series of administrative and legal processes played out.
In May 2004 Rowmoor bid R44-million, R12-million less than its closest competitor, Rapiprop 63. Rowmoor nevertheless scored 77 points in the final tender evaluation, beating Rapiprop’s 73, because of its larger empowerment shareholding.
The provincial property committee met to discuss the outcome in February 2005 and decided that, because the value of the property had increased substantially since the initial bids, they should try to get a better deal for the province by advertising for new tenders.
They recommended this to the provincial cabinet.
This, it seems, displeased Skwatsha, who called in Slabbert and demanded that the committee change its recommendation.
Slabbert, apparently nervous about his role in an irregular process and the consequences of defying his minister, wrote to the committee chairperson, Richard Petersen, detailing the pressure he had been put under. The email was obtained by investigators and featured at the disciplinary hearing: In Afrikaans, it said: ‘The minister confronted me today because he believed I had gone to speak to [then director general] Thami [Mnyati] in order to win his support for not awarding the tender to the third highest bidder [Rowmoor] [or] the highest bidder, but instead to ask for new bids — the minister feels that I am resisting the recommendation against his will — he says that he will regard it in an extremely poor light if I have acted against his wishes in any way.â€
The paper trail followed by the investigators and cross-examination of witnesses at the disciplinary hearing suggest that Slabbert, Petersen and another official, Shane Hindley, complied with the minister’s wishes.
‘During the investigative audit, we found two different provincial property committee recommendations and Mr JD Slabbert admitted that Mr S Hindley recreated the committee minutes and resolutions in line with the instructions by Skwatsha,†the forsensic report says.
Petersen signed off two contradictory recommendations to go to the cabinet. The first, on February 24, said none of the original bidders should get the land and new tenders should be called for. The second, also dated February 24, but which investigators say was drafted and signed on September 13, recommended the Rowmoor bid.
Advocate Percy Sonn, who chaired Slabbert’s disciplinary hearing, concluded that Slabbert had instructed that the minutes and recommendation of the committee be altered — effectively falsified — to make it appear that the committee had always intended the land to go to Rowmoor.
By this time tensions between Skwatsha and Rasool were clearly visible. Skwatsha had been elected ANC provincial secretary of the party. He quit his Cabinet post, with Marius Fransman, much closer politically to Rasool, succeeding him.
But in October 2005, the provincial cabinet decided to follow what it apparently thought was the committee’s genuine recommendation and awarded the land to Rowmoor. On November 2 the cabinet reversed that decision, informing Rowmoor that the land would be readvertised.
That decision seemed to have been guided by the fact that valuers now thought the land was worth R66-million. No clear evidence of interference from Skwatsha or the falsification of committee minutes had yet emerged.
Rowmoor responded by suing the Western Cape government, arguing that it should not be penalised for the department’s delays and won a Cape High Court order that the cabinet must review its decision.
The upshot is that Rowmoor has now taken possession of the land for R60-million plus VAT.
Calana and Rai told the M&G that Rowmoor had won the court case and that anything that happened within the provincial government had nothing to do with the company.
‘We ended up paying more for the land,†Calana said.
It is clear that the province could not establish a case of collusion between Skwatsha and Rowmoor and that Fransman felt he had little option but to settle.
‘We were able, in a very difficult environment, to at least get additional revenue of around R20-million,†he told the M&G, ‘but the process could have been much cleaner.â€
Skwatsha did not respond to telephonic and SMS requests for comment and on Wednesday this week laid charges against a Democratic Alliance councillor, Wilma Brady, whom he alleged had fraudulently released provincial land to a developer without authorisation.
The cast
Mcebisi Skwatsha: Provincial secretary in the Western Cape ANC, and formerly provincial minister for transport and public works. A bitter opponent of Premier Ebrahim Rasool, he is among the leaders of the ANC faction that saw Rasool ousted from the provincial party leadership in 2005. Skwatsha would like to replace Rasool as premier.
Marius Fransman: Skwatsha’s replacement as provincial minister, politically aligned with Rasool.
Shaun Rai: The CEO of the Cape Empowerment Trust and Dynamic Cables. Rai has links with many ANC business figures who are seen as opposed to Rasool. They include Fezile Calana and provincial executive committee member Chris Nissen. Rai is battling Hassen Adams, a businessperson supportive of Rasool, for control of Grand Parade Investments, the company which holds the BEE component of the lucrative GrandWest casino.
Fezile Calana: Formerly an ANC communication official and a non-executive director of the provincial development agency Wesgro, Calana is now a director of Cape Empowerment Trust, among others. Universally described as ‘close†to Skwatsha, he is also linked through the Cradock Four Trust and Cradora Investment Holdings to disgraced former ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe.
Nombeko Mlambo: A businesswoman and land claims commissioner, she is a former director of Cape Empowement Trust and current director of GrandParade Investments and SunWest. Sources close to Rowmoor say she was brought into the Tamboerskloof deal in an effort to satisfy pro-Rasool business forces. She has since fallen out with Rai over the casino battle, in which she appears to have sided with Hassen Adam.
James Slabbert: Former chief director in the department of public works, who ordered that records be altered to meet Skwatsha’s demand to award the tender to Rowmoor. Dismissed in April this year.
Land claimants denied
Land claimants, who were dispossessed of their property in Cape Town’s city bowl under apartheid were denied a chance to be offered a prime piece of Tamboerskloof land in compensation after a provincial official declined to register the interest of the regional land claims commissioner.
The land claims commission in the Western Cape expressed interest in using the prime 2,4ha site to settle outstanding land claims in the area, but this never formed part of the deliberations of the provincial property committee’s consideration of what to do with the site.
The land was instead directed to be sold to a politically-connected group of business people grouped together in Rowmoor Investments by then provincial minister Mcebisi Skwatsha. In a striking irony, Nombeko Mlambo, one of four directors of Rowmoor Investments, was a land claims commissioner at the time.
A disciplinary committee convened by the transport and public works committee heard in March that the regional land claims commissioner had ‘advised the department that they had claimants in the Tamboerskloof area who had opted for land as a form of restitution. The letter reflected that it was in the interest of the commission to reserve the land for such claimants and that they wished to have such interest placed on record.â€
James Slabbert, a chief director in the department, told other officials he was not interested in this expression of interest, even when warned that ignoring it could ‘come back to bite themâ€, according to the findings of advocate Percy Sonn.
In finding Slabbert guilty of failing to register the interest of the commission, Sonn cited the constitutional court precedent and said his conduct: ‘does not and cannot display the attitude of someone who is interested in seeing that everyone has a roof over [their] headsâ€.