The Mail & Guardian looks at 10 well-publicised cases to see if the government is getting to grips with graft or if President Jacob Zuma is just really good at public relations
WINNER OF THE WEEK
Gauteng Health Department
After handing the bulk of the administration of Gauteng’s healthcare over to a private company, the province is finally cleaning up its act. It has cancelled multimillion-rand consultancy contracts linked to former health minister Brian Hlongwa.
The auditor general this week released a report on Gauteng’s ”irregular” contracts with 3P Consulting, which was paid more than R300-million to run the provincial health department’s administration.
The contract included R7-million for the hosting of a volleyball tournament.
Now Hlongwa’s successor, Qedani Mahlangu, has cancelled 3P’s contracts and is fighting off the firm’s high court application to be paid out.
In an unusually frank affidavit before the South Gauteng High Court, the department’s acting head Frank Sibeko admits the 3P contracts involved ”serious breaches of policy” and were not ”concluded [according to] fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective” criteria.
The province also confirmed this week it recently referred to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) a forensic report into alleged wrongdoing by two key players in former premier Mbhazima Shilowa’s administration — former transport minister Ignatius Jacobs and his suspended head of department Sibusiso Buthelezi.
Jacobs is currently heading up Premier Nomvula Mokonyane’s planning commission.
Buthelezi reached a settlement with the province this week that saw him leaving its service with a payout of R1,2-million. His suspension was subsequently lifted.
But this doesn’t mean ”other law enforcement agencies” won’t be able to investigate matters highlighted by the forensic report that led to Buthelezi’s suspension, government spokesperson Thabo Masebe told the Mail & Guardian.
”I am aware that the [forensic] report of the Resolve Group has also been passed on to the agencies, including the SIU,” he said. The M&G revealed in April that Gauteng was paying 3P millions of rands despite not having funds to provide medicine or food to provincial hospitals.
Now the ANC’s chief whip in Gauteng, Hlongwa faces tough questions on the 3P tenders. The company’s managing director, Richard Payne, assisted Hlongwa with buying a house in Bryanston and both have admitted to their friendship publicly.
Gauteng’s integrity commissioner, Jules Browde, cleared Hlongwa on charges of corruption this year, but questioned Payne’s role in the purchase of Hlongwa’s house.
3P was awarded a R60-million-a-year contract in June 2007 to establish a programme management unit in the department. In 2008/9 Gauteng paid 3P R229-million (R169-million more than the contracted R60-million a year).
A three-year extension of the contract worth R273-million was signed between the department and 3P in February.
3P is accusing the department of breach of contract and claims R40million in outstanding payments. In his affidavit before the court, Payne claims the move to cut ties with 3P was political: ”… [T]here appears to have been a concerted effort to rid the department of contractual relationships entered into by the previous regime and to replace the service providers with new service providers preferred by the new regime.”
The auditor general has recommended that the department reconsider its engagement with 3P, recover duplicate payments of R7-million, and take legal action against those responsible for the irregularities. — Adriaan Basson and Ilham Rawoot
RUNNERS-UP
Bosasa
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has been investigating the correctional services department for two years on claims of multimillion-rand tender rigging and is now ready to act against the politically connected Bosasa group of companies.
SIU chief Willie Hofmeyr told Parliament last week that the unit has uncovered evidence of corruption involving R1.7-billion and implicating the department’s former national commissioner Linda Mti and ex-finance head, Patrick Gillingham. — Adriaan Basson
Jackie Selebi
Former police chief Jackie Selebi is finally standing trial for corruption and defeating the ends of justice.
Selebi had been investigated by the now defunct Scorpions since 2006 on charges that he received cash bribes from convicted druglord Glenn Agliotti in exchange for giving Agliotti access to secret police files and assisting the Kebble family and their associates. —Adriaan Basson
Collins Chabane
Groceries. That’s what Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane used his state-issued credit card to pay R2 486,55 for in September. Answering a Democratic Alliance question in Parliament this week, Chabane admitted the abuse of the card. He also paid back the card’s full R5 361,40 balance. Three months to cough up, though: that’s more favourable than the average Woolworths card. — Mandy Rossouw
LOSERS
The arms deal
There are still two ”live” legs of the arms-deal investigation — the BAE-Systems and the German Frigate Consortium inquiries. Both are on life-support, though, kept going only by the efforts of one man, former Scorpions investigator Johan du Plooy.
Du Plooy, now with the police’s priority crimes unit, has not exactly enjoyed massive support. That’s as far as we can tell: Du Plooy doesn’t return calls to save on the limited cellphone budget he has been granted. He is also very busy single-handedly trying to go through the 4,5-million pages of BAE documents that were secured here and in the United Kingdom.
Now, it is understood, his new police bosses want to take away his laptop computer — because it was issued by the Scorpions.
The appointment of Menzi Simelane this week to head the prosecution service must mean that sooner or later the decision will be made to pull the plug on this dying corruption patient.
While he was director general of the justice department, Simelane did his best to block attempts by the Scorpions to exchange information formally with their counterparts in the UK and Germany. He even tried to persuade the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to end the South African leg of its own BAE investigation.
This may yet happen. While the South African leg of the SFO’s multi-country BAE corruption probe is still on the table for a UK prosecution, it may be dropped, either as part of a settlement with BAE, or in favour of bringing only the strongest cases to trial. — Sam Sole
Chancellor House
‘In a stunning about-turn party withdraws from R5,8-billion stake” — Mail & Guardian, (February 15 to 21 2008). Uh oh — we were wrong.
The winds of change had started blowing at Polokwane in December 2007, when delegates mandated the ANC executive to ”urgently develop guidelines and policy on public and private funding [of parties], including how to regulate investment vehicles”.
By then, our revelations about ANC investment company Chancellor House profiting from state opportunities — including its R5,8-billion stake in two Eskom contracts — had highlighted the undeniable: the ANC was both player and referee.
And so, we had every reason to believe newly elected party treasurer Mathews Phosa when he told us Chancellor House would exit the Eskom contracts immediately. ”Corporate governance and good business practices are binding on all citizens of this country,” he said. ”No one is above this.”
Well, Chancellor House still holds the stake. Phosa this week referred us to Chancellor House Trust chair Popo Molefe, saying it was ”for them [the trustees] to handle”. Molefe referred us to the Chancellor House board and its managing director, Mamatho Netsianda, as they ”run the business”. And Netsianda? ”I have nothing to do with newspapers. Speak to him [Phosa].” — Stefaans Brümmer
Schabir Shaik
When Yunis and Moe Shaik were in security police detention, the family bypassed the system by smuggling money and notes to them rolled up inside drinking-straws. When Schabir Shaik was sent to jail for corruption in November 2006, a much more ambitious deception operation was set in motion.
Backed by an effective political indemnity that grew in strength as Jacob Zuma’s power base grew, Shaik went from serving his time in a hospital ward, to a dubious medical parole, to playing golf and driving around in a BMW X6, his latest piece of BEE bling.
Now he is enjoying the pleasant prospect of having his application for a presidential pardon considered by the man whose lifestyle he propped up to the tune of R4-million — and for whom he took the pain of prosecution. He might even get back the proceeds of his ill-gotten gains.
And, of course, Zuma’s good fortune in having his own corruption charges dropped was thanks also to a highly sophisticated intelligence operation that leaked the intercepted conversations of his adversaries inside the National Prosecuting Authority.
These may or may not be the two sides of the same operation, but they are undoubtedly the two sides of the same attitude. It’s one that says: we, not the courts, decide what is corruption and who is guilty or not guilty.
The Mbeki administration may have invented selective justice, but the Zuma administration may yet perfect it. — Sam Sole
Ace Magashule
Free State Premier Ace Magashule has been implicated twice in corruption scandals this year but has escaped censure so far.
In May the M&G reported that businessman Tebogo Koetle had provided the Mangaung municipality with an affidavit alleging that a legislature employee solicited a bribe on Magashule’s behalf to approve a land deal Koetle was bidding for. Magashule, a close ally of President Jacob Zuma, denied this.
A month later, businessman Bongani Biyela claimed under oath that Magashule had solicited a R3-million bribe to approve a casino transaction. The premier denied it, and no police probe has been instituted. — Adriaan Basson
SNOOZERS
Land Bank
Six years of corruption at the Land Bank have yet to result in a single criminal prosecution.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has promised that arrests will be made and the Hawks have spoken of action against ”prominent names”.
Gordhan has directed the Financial Intelligence Centre to trace a web of alleged multimillion-rand AgriBEE fraud at the Land Bank that the M&G exposed last year.
Chief executive Phakamani Hadebe had previously commissioned four forensic audits and called in the police, but no one has yet been held accountable for the rot. Moves to clean up the bank began only last year when the treasury took over responsibility for the place.
Controversial investments involving golf and equestrian estates, fraud in the emerging farmer empowerment scheme and IT irregularities are among a long queue of scandals.
The AgriBEE fund intended for emerging farmers had allegedly been abused by former chief executive Phil Mohlahlane and his friend, former Gauteng politician Dan Mofokeng, to buy houses, cars and other properties.
The role of former agriculture minister Lulu Xingwana, including why she protected Mohlahlane for so long, has never been probed. — Yolandi Groenewald
SABC
It is unclear whether criminal charges will be laid against any SABC managers. The Auditor General’s recent report identified several irregularities at the public broadcaster but does not name and shame the SABC staffers allegedly involved.
Suspended chief financial officer Robin Nicholson was ”unsuspended” for three days this week so that he could return to the public broadcaster to deal with creditors.
Following the Auditor General’s report, Nicholson was suspended along with head of procurement Mabela Satekge, head of audience services Anton Heunis and content executive Mvuso Mbebe.
Matilda Gaboo, the SABC’s former head of international programme buying, was the subject of a preliminary audit report into ”mass corruption and mismanagement. Gaboo was alleged to have spent R49-million on programmes that were never aired.
The probe into Gaboo was triggered after she reportedly dumped a bag stuffed with R121 584 in cash on a travel agent’s desk to pay for air tickets for her friend and ANC treasurer general Mathews Phosa.
Mafika Sihlali, the SABC’s former legal officer, was accused in an audit of defrauding the broadcaster of R1,8-million, but nothing has happened. — Lloyd Gedye and Glynnis Underhill