Gangster State

appointed approximately a year before Open Water was appointed and
one would expect that after such an extended period they would have
collected the documentation required. When we were appointed they
made little progress,’ said Pieterse.
An SIU investigator had asked Open Water for the firm’s mandate for
its investigation, but Open Water refused to comply. ‘I respectfully
advised him that he held no proclamation to subpoena me for the
information, whereafter no further requests for any documentation
were received from the SIU,’ said Pieterse.
The strangest thing about Pieterse’s response was that he tried to
convince me that Open Water and the SIU had been tasked to probe
entirely different matters. ‘My understanding was that the SIU was
mandated to investigate the development and delivery of low-cost
housing at the time for the period ended July 2010 .’ The Free State’s
R 1 -billion RDP splurge only occurred at the end of that year. ‘It is
therefore obvious that we investigated different matters and therefore
we could not have restricted the SIU or any other law enforcement
agency in performing their work,’ maintained Pieterse.
But it wasn’t ‘obvious’ at all.
The SIU, in a formal response, made it clear that it had probed the
same advance payments Open Water investigated. ‘The investigation
pertaining to the unauthorised payments of advances by the Free State
Department of Human Settlement[s] regarding the 2010 / 2011 and
2011 / 2012 financial years is finalised. The findings and
recommendations are contained in a report addressed to the Office of
Presidency, who acknowledged receipt of the said report on 2 October
2015 ,’ the SIU said in a letter it sent me in October 2018.
Even FSHS HOD Tim Mokhesi confirmed the SIU had been on the