however, not among the companies from which the department sought to recover money.
Listed next to one another, as the 17th and 18th respondents respectively, are Clear Creek Trading 115 and Makana Women Construction. According to the court papers, Clear Creek Trading is in the ‘care of Petrus Zanemvula Matosa’ and Makana Women Construction is in the ‘care of Mpho Ramakatsa’. According to the HSS, Clear Creek Trading received more than R2 million in 2011.
Coincidentally, Matosa and a few co-directors registered the company in June 2009, a month after Magashule was sworn in as premier.
Makana Women Construction has to date earned more than R20
million from the FSHS. This includes payments totalling almost R10
million during the time of the department’s big expenditure drive.
What is relevant to this narrative is that Matosa and Ramakatsa both crossed swords with Magashule around this time.
Matosa, a former ANC provincial chairperson and erstwhile member of Magashule’s inner circle, had begun to drift away from his former ally in around 2009. Ramakatsa was a leader of the so-called Regime Change group, which locked horns with the Magashule faction in an acrimonious battle for power in the province. Ramakatsa had also orchestrated the court battle that ended in an embarrassing legal lashing for the Magashule camp in late 2012. The Constitutional Court had ruled that the Free State’s provincial elective conference held in mid-2012, and where Magashule was re-elected as chairperson, had been fraught with irregularities. The Provincial Executive Committee had therefore been elected unlawfully, the court found.4
As a result, the national leadership had dissolved the PEC and scheduled another elective conference for May 2013. 5 It looked as if
Ramakatsa was going to challenge Magashule for the position of provincial boss, with Matosa on his slate vying for the position of secretary.6 But the Regime Change group suffered a major blow when Ramakatsa’s branch was barred from participating in the conference. 7
Ramakatsa later claimed that the second conference, which again re-elected Magashule and his cohorts, was as riddled with irregularities as the previous one. 8 But instead of mounting a fresh legal challenge, Ramakatsa joined the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). Matosa, for his part, faded into political oblivion. As far as their companies were concerned, someone behind the scenes ensured that the provincial government’s money taps were closed to them for good. Makana Women Construction and Clear Creek Trading received their last payments from the FSHS in the 2012/13 financial year, according to the HSS.
I had a chat with Matosa in late 2018. He said the RDP splurge amounted to ‘fiscal dumping’, but that the companies targeted in Mokhesi’s court application were ‘dolphins’ while the ‘sharks’ were let off the hook. As for his own company, Matosa maintained that he was only paid for work that he had completed and for which he had submitted claims. ‘Clear Creek got a contract to build 200 houses in Brandfort,’ he told me. ‘It rained heavily for about four months during that time, so we could only finish about 100 houses before the contract period lapsed. But we were only paid for the houses we completed.’
He felt that he had been targeted in the lawsuit for political reasons.
‘They tried to destroy me and Mbalula, through his wife, by listing us in the court papers,’ he said.
The third significant person listed in the department’s court application is Maggie Nthatisi, wife of Gregory Nthatisi, a former
Umkhonto we Sizwe member who later served alongside Magashule in the 1994 provincial cabinet appointed by Mosiuoa Lekota. 9 Sources familiar with Free State politics told me that Nthatisi played a crucial role in helping Magashule become provincial chair at the 2002 elective conference.
In the 2000s, the Nthatisis started doing brisk business with the Free State government, especially in the low-cost housing sector. The HSS
shows that four companies managed by or linked to them have over the years earned revenue of about R400 million from the FSHS. This includes payments of about R23 million in 2010/11, the year in which the department’s ‘fraudulent scheme’ was rolled out.
But, like Mbalula, Gregory Nthatisi was associated with the 2012
Regime Change movement, with the de facto mouthpiece for the Magashule administration, The Weekly, going so far as to call him the
‘face’ of the campaign. For someone who had so richly benefited from government contracts, Nthatisi had some harsh words for the Magashule regime. ‘This move … in its nature is aimed at stopping the abuse of power, patronage, corrupt practices at the level of the ANC
and state power,’ he said. 10
Nthatisi’s ‘betrayal’ coincided with a dramatic turn in fortune for his and his wife’s low-cost housing empire. The FSHS’s financial data perfectly encapsulates how their businesses suffered the same fate as those of Matosa and Ramakatsa in the wake of the unsuccessful attempt to oust Magashule and his allies.
In the 2011/12 financial year, just before the Regime Change challengers mounted their attack, the four Nthatisi businesses earned a healthy R25 million in revenue from the FSHS. But by the following financial year, their revenue was down to just under R4 million. And in
2014, the companies collectively earned a paltry R800 000. After that, they did not receive a single cent from the department ever again.
The data correlates with anecdotal evidence that Magashule abused his power as premier to financially reward politically connected contractors who stayed loyal to him, while punishing those who somehow betrayed him. ‘If Ace felt that you had stabbed him in the back, he made sure that you never again got contracts from whichever department you had been working with,’ said a former close associate of Magashule.
Mokhesi said it was ‘not true’ that he and the FSHS had used the court application to target Magashule’s political foes.
Another major beneficiary of low-cost housing contracts in the Magashule era is soccer-club owner turned construction mogul Mike Mokoena, whose company Tshwara Thebe Construction, or TTC, received contracts from the FSHS worth R310 million between 2012
and 2018. While TTC was one of the 106 respondents in the department’s court application, it was not sued to return some of its earnings.
Mokoena is best known as the owner and chairman of the Free State Stars, a professional soccer team based in Bethlehem in the eastern Free State. His career as a tenderpreneur appears to have taken off in 2002, when a collection of companies he co-owned with various family members clinched tenders from the provincial departments of social welfare and education to deliver food parcels, textbooks and stationery. 11
Mokoena has no qualms about being labelled a tenderpreneur. ‘My life is to tender,’ he told the Sunday Times in 2010. ‘I apply for tenders,
that’s my lifestyle. I’ve got guys dealing with tenders full time. I’m not ashamed to say that’s my lifestyle.’12
Magashule seemingly viewed himself as the source of the largesse bestowed on companies like TTC, and he apparently demanded reciprocity from the likes of Mokoena.
One source, a member of the Free State business fraternity, attended a gathering of about fifty contractors at Magashule’s office in Bloemfontein in early 2014, before that year’s general election.
Magashule had invited his favourite friends from the business sector to ask them for a special favour. ‘Ace told us we needed to make financial contributions to the ANC for the upcoming elections,’ this source told me. ‘He said the ANC had been good to our companies, and that he would close the money taps if we didn’t support the ANC.’
The businesspeople were asked to each pledge an amount. It was reminiscent of the Free State ANC provincial conference in 2008, when Magashule demanded that party members and invited guests donate towards Zuma’s legal fees. According to my source at the 2014
gathering, Mokoena was among those who made the largest pledges to the ANC.
Mokoena said he wouldn’t comment on ‘alleged rumours’ and would only
respond to ‘factual allegations made by identified persons’.
One ‘identified person’ was willing to discuss allegedly dubious dealings between Mokoena and Magashule. Mxolisi Dukwana, a former Free State MEC, told me Mokoena once ‘pledged’ to donate R1
million to the ANC. This was before the Regime Change bloc’s failed attempt in 2012 to topple Magashule and his allies. As the ruling party’s then treasurer in the Free State, Dukwana was tasked with managing and collecting such contributions. ‘The money was to be
paid in two instalments of R500 000. The next thing I knew Ace had collected the first R500 000 himself. Mike did later pay the second R500 000 to the ANC, but the money Ace took did not come to the ANC,’ alleged Dukwana.
Mokoena strongly denied the allegation. ‘The information at your disposal is false and incorrect. I did not pledge the amount of R1
million at any relevant time nor is it true that R500 000 was collected by Mr. Magashule himself or any other person for that matter,’ he said.
Dukwana remained resolute. ‘If Mr. Mokoena wants to create an impression that I had imagined things about his pledge to the ANC he is making a big mistake.’
Further careful analysis of the companies listed in the FSHS’s court papers and on the HSS reveals that the spouses and children of some of Magashule’s senior colleagues in the provincial government and the local legislature also benefited from housing contracts. Subsequent progress reports have highlighted problems with the work of each one of these entities.
People First Construction, Moyakhe Trading, Phahama Development Trust and Jore Construction were all listed as respondents in the court application, but were not sued to recover money. Collectively, these companies received payments totalling over R40 million during Magashule’s reign as premier. Unlike the entities owned by or linked to Magashule’s political enemies, the names of the directors of these businesses are not revealed in the court papers.
CIPC records show that People First Construction’s sole director is Tankiso Morule, wife of Playfair Morule, a long-serving Magashule ally. Morule himself was once a director of the company.
Playfair Morule has held several senior political and executive
positions in the Free State, including MEC for finance, and for safety and security. He later became the ANC’s chief whip in the provincial legislature under Magashule’s stewardship. A guilty conviction on a charge of culpable homicide following a hit-and-run incident did not stop him from becoming the mayor of Bloemfontein in 2008. 13
In 2013, at the height of the Gupta shadow state’s rule over South Africa, Morule was appointed as South Africa’s high commissioner to India. 14 And in early 2018, then public enterprises minister and suspected Gupta backer Lynne Brown apparently tried to have Morule appointed as chairperson of Eskom. 15
Morule’s wife, meanwhile, has reaped the benefits of being a building contractor employed by the Free State provincial government. People First has received almost R140 million from the FSHS to date, according to the HSS. The same records suggest that People First is among the contractors guilty of leaving behind incomplete houses. Of the 200 RDP units this company was appointed to build in 2010, 87
were incomplete in 2013, according to one progress report. People First apparently abandoned the project because of delays in getting paid by the department. 16
Moyanda Mohai, the wife of another former chief whip turned MEC, has also been on the receiving end of lucrative contracts. She is married to Seiso Mohai, who served as Magashule’s MEC for finance from 2009 to 2013.17 Her company, Moyakhe Trading, has to date received more than R18 million from the FSHS, mostly in the period after Magashule became premier.
Moyakhe Trading got a contract to build 300 houses in Bloemfontein in 2010. By 2013, only 132 houses had been completed. A progress report lists ‘cashflow problems’ among the reasons for the contractor’s
inability to complete the project on time. 18
By the look of things, the Free State legislature was the place to be if you wanted your family members to clinch RDP contracts. The husband of the late Mantsheng ‘Ouma’ Tsopo, a former speaker of the provincial legislature, got in on the action too. Sandile Tsopo is a trustee of the Phahama Development Trust, which over the years earned revenue of about R36 million from the FSHS. This includes payments made during the big splurge of 2010.
Tsopo was convicted in 2007 on fraud charges related to dodgy contracts from the Free State Department of Education, which his late wife once headed.19 This clearly had no impact on Phahama’s ability to score provincial contracts after Magashule took over as premier.
Along with Hlaudi Motsoeneng and Nozuko Mbalula, Sandile Tsopo was one of the few connected individuals exposed by the media in relation to the 2010 splurge. He told Volksblad in 2017 that he had been appointed to build 600 houses in Matjhabeng (Welkom), but that he had completed only 200. He claimed that the project ground to a halt after his materials supplier died, and maintained that he had only received payment for work done and for which Phahama had invoiced the department. 20
Ouma Tsopo’s predecessor as speaker, Moeketsi Sesele, was a member of the Free State’s pro-Magashule northern faction. His daughter Masedi is the director of Jore Construction, which received payments of more than R10 million for RDP houses between 2010 and 2014. Jore has perhaps the worst performance record of the four entities linked to politicians in the legislature. Appointed to build 400
houses in Thaba ’Nchu near Bloemfontein in 2010, nearly three years later it had completed only 84 units. 21 Most worryingly, the lives of the
occupants of some of these houses were literally in danger. One of the completed houses collapsed in 2013, and inspectors refused to accept a further fourteen finished houses ‘due to poor mortar mix’.22
Thutela Bogolo Trading Enterprise was also on the receiving end of large RDP contracts. This is the company owned by Rachelle Els, Magashule’s buddy from Parys. Thanks to her powerful friend, Els seemingly established a small RDP empire. Thutela Bogolo earned more than R110 million from the FSHS between 2010 and 2017, including R35 million paid out during the department’s problematic expenditure drive in 2010, according to the HSS. Els claimed the department’s records were incorrect and that her company had received much less than that.
Department records suggest that many of Els’s construction contracts came to her directly from Magashule by way of Operation Hlasela, the premier’s controversial development programme. Of the more than 1
600 houses she was allocated to build in 2010 in the towns of Kroonstad, Steynsrus, Oranjeville and Koppies, 510 were given to her through Operation Hlasela.
By early 2013, only 240 of the houses allocated to Thutela Bogolo had been finished. 23 Els admitted that it had taken years to complete some of her houses, but she blamed administrative and financial problems at the FSHS for the delays. She was adamant that all of her construction work had been of the highest quality.
As with other RDP contractors, there were rumours of an unusually close bond between Magashule and Els.
The former premier’s official diary confirms that there was contact between the two during his incumbency. For example, in August 2011
Els met with Magashule at his office in Bloemfontein. This was right in
the middle of a financial year in which Thutela Bogolo earned R21
million from the FSHS, according to the HSS.
Several sources have claimed that Magashule often visited Els at her home in Parys and sometimes even spent the night. His diary contains details that suggest this may be true. On the weekend of 20 and 21
October 2012, for example, Magashule’s diary shows consecutive
‘private visit[s]’ at ‘Roshelle’s Place Parys’ [ sic].
Els told me Magashule sometimes spent the night at a guesthouse in Parys owned by her daughter. ‘Everyone in Parys knows him, so he needed a place to stay over where people wouldn’t be able to bother him,’ she said. Magashule apparently p
aid for his accommodation.
There is also the matter of an overseas trip that Els, Magashule and other Free State officials embarked on in 2010. My sources told me the then premier went to the USA in that year, and that contractors like Els helped foot the bill.
Els admitted that she went to the USA with Magashule. She denied that she had bankrolled the entire trip, but indicated that she’d had to pay money into a bank account to help fund the journey. Magashule was going to accept some award from an American institution, according to Els. When it turned out that he needed to pay for the accolade, he decided not to accept it. But the trip continued regardless.
Els denied that the trip had been a way of showing her gratitude to Magashule for her company’s RDP contracts.
In May 2012, the FSHS named Els ‘Best Contractor of the Year for the role her company, Thutela Bogolo … played in helping the department meet its objective of building sustainable houses for the poor’, according to The Weekly, which covered the occasion. 24
The Govan Mbeki Awards, in which Els was honoured, were hosted
by human settlements MEC Olly Mlamleli, who was ‘flanked’ by Magashule, the newspaper reported. At the ceremony, Els described how she got ahead in the RDP business: ‘I approached the [Mangaung metro] municipality and spoke with the mayor Thabo Manyoni and I offered to help the government build better RDP houses. He then linked me with the Free State premier, who subsequently gave me the opportunity to build one of the show houses that formed part of the government’s building projects.’
‘I would like to thank Mr Magashule for believing in me and for giving me a chance to showcase what I think every human being should have – a decent house,’ she said in her acceptance speech.
I spoke to Manyoni who denied ‘linking’ Els with Magashule. ‘She knew Ace and Hantsi [Matseke] long before me!’ he protested.
Els’s comments, no doubt unintentionally, confirmed the long-held suspicion that Magashule directly influenced the awarding of tenders in his provincial departments. Instead of obtaining contracts through a competitive bidding process or even through lobbying the department itself, Els seemed to be affirming that one had to win Magashule’s approval to get a foot in the door.
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