Gangster State

communities witnessed RDP projects grinding to a halt right in front of
their eyes as the inexperienced contractors started running into
financial trouble. ‘There were young, new contractors who had never
built a single house before,’ one former FSHS official said. ‘Now they
suddenly had a R 17 -million contract to build 200 houses. Some of
them took their first payments from the department and bought fancy
cars. Others went to the Durban July and partied like there was no
tomorrow.’
Some department staffers knew that the situation would inevitably
explode into the open. The first sign of trouble came in early 2011 ,
before the financial year-end. In February, Magashule reshuffled his
executive council. He sent Zwane to the Department of Agriculture and
Rural Development. Mamiki Qabathe, who would later become the
speaker of the provincial legislature, replaced Zwane at human
settlements.^25
The move could be interpreted in a variety of ways. One source, a
former Magashule ally, said the premier was angry with Zwane
because of the R 260 million in unspent housing money that the
province had lost out on. But perhaps that had merely provided
Magashule with an excuse to move Zwane to a department in which
his friends from Saxonwold, the Guptas, would soon require a man on
the inside. After all, the infamous Vrede dairy project would be
initiated in 2012 , not long after Zwane became MEC for agriculture, as
described in Chapter 14. More likely, however, is that Magashule
needed to parachute his henchmen out of the FSHS before any probes
into the housing contracts commenced.
Sources familiar with the saga revealed some astonishing information
that seems to support this theory. When Zwane left human settlements