year, over R 600 million was paid to materials suppliers,^23 and about
R 500 million was paid to building contractors.
According to one of my sources, the ERP was not necessarily a bad
idea. Some of the materials suppliers, such as brick manufacturers,
required advance payments to keep operating during the weeks in
December and January when they would ordinarily have closed shop.
The problem was that the department was completely incapable of
monitoring the situation to determine which of the materials suppliers
had delivered their goods and which of the contractors were building
their houses.
When FSHS inspectors did go out to select sites, they found that some
of the contractors and materials suppliers had been cheating to increase
their profit margins. ‘The contracts with the department stipulate that
houses need to be built with SABS [South African Bureau of
Standards]-approved materials,’ my source told me. ‘But either the
contractors or the materials suppliers, or both, were cutting corners by
using cheaper, low-quality materials. That is why some houses in the
province started falling apart after two years.’ In some instances,
contractors had run out of money halfway through their projects.
Others had simply not built any houses whatsoever.
At the end of the 2010 / 11 financial year, after the aggressive
expenditure drive had come to a close, the FSHS had still failed to
spend R 260 million. This money was subsequently reapportioned by
national government.^24 It did not reflect well on Magashule’s
administration, but it was a hell of a lot better than having to pay back
more than R 1 billion.
From the perspective of the province’s would-be recipients of low-cost
housing, however, there was little cause for celebration. Some
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