Gangster State

40 -square-metre specifications. The sources I spoke to claim
Magashule insisted that the department find new contractors to build
the bigger houses, sidelining many of the original contractors.
‘The first batch of contractors had already done their bill of quantities
based on the old 40 -square-metre specifications, and they had signed
contracts with the department,’ explained the former FSHS official.
With Magashule’s new mandate, the department simply failed to
honour these contracts. Some of the contractors felt aggrieved enough
to take the province to court, but the premier soldiered on. ‘Ace told us
that people should take him to court if they wanted to; he was going to
appoint new contractors,’ said my source.
This former official now believes Magashule’s call for bigger houses
was a ploy to get rid of the original contractors so that a new batch of
politically connected businesspeople could benefit from RDP projects.
An analysis of the list of new contractors certainly supports this view.
A member of Magashule’s erstwhile executive council recalls an even
more troubling event. ‘Ace called a lot of us together and told us there
was going to be this huge series of housing contracts, so we needed to
bring “our people” into the mix,’ claimed this politician.
According to court papers,^8 in early 2010 the FSHS initiated a fresh
tender process based on the new specifications. When the tender closed
in April, the department had received bids from 361 contractors.
However, amid all the uncertainty over the new specifications, the
department was unable to award any contracts before the tender’s
validity period lapsed. At the end of July, the department’s bid
adjudication committee met to discuss the contracts.
At this stage, the FSHS was facing disaster. It was already midway
into the second quarter of the financial year, and the department had