Gangster State

863 had pocketed altogether R 52 million from the FSHS. The JV,
meanwhile, earned just over R 23 million for the Bohlokong project.
Matseke said her company should not have been included in the email
regarding NURCHA’s probe into the advance payments. She said
Friedshelf 863 had been paid as both a supplier and contractor, but
didn’t receive any money in advance. Her company was not ‘implicated
by the findings of the investigation’, she said.
The HSS suggests that Friedshelf 863 and its JV partner left behind
incomplete houses at the Bohlokong project. Matseke said the JV
finished all but seven of the houses it was supposed to deliver. This
was due to ‘beneficiary management challenges’.
After being rebranded as Maono Construction, Matseke’s firm began
to soar in the Free State. Its contracts from the FSHS alone in the
period after 2013 were worth more than R 150 million, according to the
HSS. In total, Maono bagged more than R 500 million in contracts from
the FSHS and other departments in Magashule’s provincial
government.
Matseke did not take kindly to my questions about her relationship
with Magashule. ‘I find this line of question[ing] unacceptable,
extremely offensive and hurtful as it creates an innuendo that my
companies get contracts as a result of certain perceived relationships.
In short, this is degrading, sexist and undermining to black business
women in this country,’ she said. She denied that Magashule played a
role in contracts awarded to her companies.
Despite Friedshelf 863 having featured in the NURCHA probe, as
suggested by the leaked email, the department chose not to list the
company in its court bid, thus shielding Magashule’s chum. Worse still,
there were suppliers who received money in the 2010 / 11 splurge that