Gangster State

Magashule’s hometown of Parys paid Botlokwa Holdings R 2. 1 million
for ‘protective clothing’ for municipal employees.^3
At some point, Botlokwa teamed up with Maono Construction, the
company owned by FDC chairperson and fellow Parys local Hantsi
Matseke. According to its website, Maono Construction secured
contracts worth more than R 500 million from the Free State
government while Magashule was premier. These included the RDP
projects mentioned in Part III. Matseke told me that Botlokwa became
Maono’s ‘enterprise development’ partner, but secured revenues of only
about R 2 million through the partnership. Matseke, however, was also
present on the fringes of the property deal unpacked in this chapter.
In early 2014 , Ikhraam Osman, who had worked with Magashule at
the Free State Department of Economic Affairs and Tourism in the
1990 s, was appointed CEO of the FDC. Sources claim that Osman,
along with Matseke and a few other FDC officials, abetted
Magashule’s capture of the state-owned entity’s purse.
The FDC, which has a mandate to grow and support the Free State’s
economy, partners with a wide range of businesses all over the
province. One such business was a Shell fuel station in the eastern Free
State town of Phuthaditjhaba, the former capital of the QwaQwa
homeland. The FDC owned the land on which the petrol station was
situated, and the petrol station’s owner rented the site from the FDC. It
was a thriving business, according to sources familiar with the saga. It
employed about sixty-five petrol attendants, shop assistants, cleaners
and other staff, who in turn fed many more mouths in a corner of the
province where unemployment and poverty are about as bad as it gets.
In June 2014 , the petrol station’s owner received notice from the FDC
that it intended to cancel the lease agreement for the site. In October,