Gangster State

the contract price.^13 What this means is that, without a bidding
process, the transport department now cannot appoint company X to
supply it with computers worth R 100 million on the back of a tender
granted by the public works department for toilet paper worth R 1
million. In this hypothetical scenario, both the price and the type of the
goods vary too greatly to qualify for a deviation from the PFMA.
The FSHS made use of Treasury Regulation 16 A 6. 6 to appoint the
joint venture between Blackhead and Diamond Hill. In July 2014 ,
FSHS HOD Tim Mokhesi wrote a letter to Margaret-Ann Diedricks,
who was acting HOD in Gauteng’s human settlements department,
seeking her approval for the appointment of the Blackhead/Diamond
Hill joint venture by his department in line with Treasury Regulation
16 A 6. 6.^14 (More than one source has described Mokhesi, whom we
met in previous chapters, as Ace Magashule’s henchman in the FSHS.)
Diedricks, who would be redeployed to the national Department of
Water and Sanitation as director-general later that year after being
‘headhunted’ by Nomvula Mokonyane,^15 wasted no time writing back
to Mokhesi: ‘I hereby confirm my decision taken on 21 July 2014 that
the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements granted approval in
terms of Treasury Regulation 16 A 6. 6 for the Free State Department of
Human Settlements to participate in the contract arranged by means of
a competitive bidding process from the database of the Gauteng
Department of Human Settlements for Professional Resource Teams
where Blackhead Consulting (Pty) Ltd was appointed from.’^16
Thabane Zulu, director-general in the national department, wrote a
letter to Mokhesi a few weeks later in which he confirmed Diedricks’s
decision: the FSHS could appoint Blackhead without a tender process,
based on the company’s earlier appointment in Gauteng.^17 Zulu,