Gangster State

finally lodged a legal bid at the Bloemfontein High Court in January
2017 for its agreement with Emendo to be declared void.^8 That case is
ongoing.
A document from the national Department of Human Settlements’
Housing Development Agency (HDA) provides a clue as to why
Magashule may have wanted to get rid of Emendo. In 2016 , while the
premier’s office and the local municipality were busy fighting with the
incumbent turnkey developer, the HDA compiled a ‘fact sheet’ for the
Vogelfontein development. According to the document, the HDA
envisaged that Vogelfontein would be developed into a whole new town
with more than 5 000 housing units. The total project value, which
included the new houses and related infrastructure, would come to
almost R 4 billion.^9 Considering his connections with businesspeople in
the construction industry, including his own daughter, it is not difficult
to imagine why Magashule would have wanted full control of this
potential revenue stream.
When I first wrote about this issue for News 24 in March 2018 ,
Magashule denied that he had helped Thoko’s company clinch the
RDP contracts from the FSHS. ‘The honourable premier is not at all
involved in the awarding of tenders or any related processes,’ his office
told me. ‘The honourable premier was therefore not involved in the
appointment of the service provider with regards to the Bethlehem RDP
project.’
It was the same kind of broad denial that his office routinely dished
up when confronted with allegations of corruption. The circumstances
that led to the Vogelfontein mess, however, make it extremely difficult
to take this denial at face value. After all, Magashule was physically
present at the very first site meeting with Thoko’s Chinese business