Gangster State

division. At the time, FSHS HOD Tim Mokhesi was a Centlec board
member. Other board members included Kenosi Moroka and Blacky
Seoe, both former business partners to Magashule.
Empowerment Ministries International can also be linked to
Magashule and Mathabo Leeto. According to the former’s diary, he
delivered a keynote address at an Empowerment Ministries event in
November 2012. And in August 2017 , Leeto was a speaker at the
church’s Affluent Women’s Conference hosted by Thulisiwe. Sources
in the Free State’s political circles told me that Magashule kept a few
pastors and other religious figures close to him. These clergymen
would sometimes include messages of support for his administration in
their sermons. One contact, a senior provincial official, told me
Motsamai Kareli was one of Magashule’s ‘favourites’. Kareli denied
this. ‘I have no connections with Mr Makgashule [sic] or Mr Tim
Mokhesi. I doubt they even know me,’ he responded when I asked him
about it.
This is hard to believe. The Karelis’ listed residential address is a
property in the upmarket Woodland Hills Wildlife Estate on the
outskirts of Bloemfontein. Mosidi Motsemme, Magashule’s
‘Bloemfontein wife’, and Moreki Moroka, wife of Kenosi Moroka, also
have houses here. Furthermore, Motsamai Kareli is a director of KICS
Holdings. According to the entity’s website, one of its clients is E’tsho
Civils, the engineering firm owned by Tlale Mokgadi, the businessman
who travelled to Cuba with Magashule in January 2015. ‘You won’t be
doing business with E’tsho or Mokgadi without crossing paths with
Ace at some point,’ one of Magashule’s former confidants told me.
Kareli later put me in touch with his lawyers, none other than Moroka
Attorneys, the firm owned by Centlec board member Kenosi Moroka,