out contracts to people associated with Magashule.
A second source, who later served as an MEC in Magashule’s cabinet,
agreed that the capture process began in 2002. ‘There is a pattern of
municipal managers appointed from 2002 who were from Fezile Dabi
[the district around Magashule’s hometown of Parys] or who were
otherwise close to him,’ he said.
Two years after Magashule became provincial chairperson, his
banishment to Cape Town came to an end. He returned to the Free
State in 2004 , where he briefly joined the provincial legislature as an
MPL.
After the national election in April 2004 , Mbeki appointed Beatrice
Marshoff as the Free State’s new premier. Marshoff, who had been the
MEC for social development in Direko’s cabinet, was apparently
‘shocked’ when Mbeki appointed her ahead of Magashule.^1
It is unlikely that Magashule would have been similarly shocked by
yet another snub from the party’s national leadership.
Marshoff said that Magashule and his cronies approached her right
after she became premier. ‘We had a meeting at Kopano Nokeng [a
lodge and conference centre outside Bloemfontein] where they
cornered me with a list of demands for people they wanted me to
appoint as MECs,’ she told me. ‘I said, “No, I’ll decide who is going to
get appointed.”’ At that stage, she had no intention to include
Magashule or any members of his clique in her government. ‘I had
been warned by Terror [Lekota] how much time and energy it took to
keep his [Magashule’s] trouble under control,’ Marshoff told me.
Nevertheless, in yet another attempt to try to heal the province’s
festering political wounds, the national leadership asked Marshoff to