wrongdoing, but they couldn’t be held accountable alone.’ But Zwane
and Mokoena, former MEC and HOD respectively, were of course
safely tucked away in other spheres of government by then. So too was
Dlamini, the former CFO.
Around this time, the auditor-general also probed the debacle and
confirmed that houses that had been uploaded onto the department’s
housing subsidy system (HSS) could not be physically verified.^38 In
other words, some of the contractors had been paid for houses that
were never built. Others had started their respective projects but then
abandoned them, leaving scores of unfinished houses all over the Free
State.^39
Magashule and Mlamleli met with senior department officials in April
2012 ‘to discuss the fact that contractors appointed to construct the ...
houses were simply not performing’, this according to an affidavit to
which Mokhesi would later depose.^40 ‘At the meeting, it emerged that
the contractors’ failure to perform under their contracts was largely
caused by the fact that materials had not been delivered to them by the
suppliers,’ Mokhesi stated.
The FSHS, it seemed, had decided at an early stage that it would
apportion most of the blame to the suppliers of building materials,
despite the fact that the department’s primary contractual relationship
had been with the builders. This would create an opportunity for
Magashule’s associates and other politically connected beneficiaries to
escape scrutiny and avoid being held financially accountable.
The department subsequently appointed Open Water, a private
forensic auditing firm, to probe the matter. It also appointed two
private engineering firms to determine the scale of the wastage.
Considering the earlier probe by the AG and the involvement of the
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