Gangster State

however, not among the companies from which the department sought
to recover money.
Listed next to one another, as the 17 th and 18 th 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 R 2 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 R 20
million from the FSHS. This includes payments totalling almost R 10
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