14

A family of fixers

The Vrede dairy scandal remains perhaps the most glaring example of
the callous manner in which the Guptas and their accomplices in
government captured state projects that were meant to uplift poor
South Africans. Court documents filed over the matter later suggested
Magashule had been involved in the scandal right from the outset.
In February 2012 , the then relatively obscure MEC for agriculture and
rural development in the Free State, Mosebenzi Zwane, delivered his
department’s budget vote address in the province’s legislature in
Bloemfontein. Zwane had not been in this role for too long, having
been parachuted out of the provincial Department of Human
Settlements following 2010 ’s R 1 -billion RDP advance payments fiasco,
as unpacked in Part III.
Zwane stated that his department would embark on a ‘multi-year
mega public and private partnership business concept’ to help initiate
‘income generation through farming in the rural areas of the province’
and, ultimately, to support ‘black economic empowerment’.^1 The
initiative (initially) had a budget of more than R 131 million, said
Zwane, and it would include a dairy hub in the Thabo Mofutsanyana
district municipality in the eastern Free State.^2 ‘With this investment
we want to break the back of unemployment, poverty and food
insecurity,’ Zwane declared.^3
Less than four months later, Zwane’s department signed a contract
with a little-known company called Estina. The latter was appointed as
the ‘implementing agent’ for a dairy project in the small town of Vrede,