9

Fall guys and fat cats

Magashule must have been relieved that Sexwale was no longer around
to scrutinise his province’s housing projects.
In 2013 , Olly Mlamleli and Tim Mokhesi began legal proceedings to
try to recover a significant chunk of the misspent fortune. The FSHS
served summonses on 22 of the more than 100 companies involved in
the saga. These companies, mostly materials suppliers, had altogether
received R 631 million throughout the 2010 / 11 and 2011 / 12 financial
years.^1 In court papers, the department maintained that the suppliers
had benefited from ‘unjust enrichment’, and it wanted them to pay
back the money.^2
It was a curious strategy. Going after the materials suppliers was all
well and good if the department could prove that they received money
without supplying any materials. But it made no sense that the
department chose not to pursue the contractors as well. After all, the
contractors had received more than R 500 million among them, and the
department was already on record saying that these companies were at
least as guilty as the materials suppliers when it came to the non-
delivery of houses.
Mokhesi’s later affidavit summed up the scale of the fiasco: When the
department awarded the construction contracts, it split particular
housing sites amongst different contractors – for example, several
contractors would be appointed to build houses in a particular
township, with each contractor responsible for a particular number of
houses in that township.