Gangster State

not be connected to water or electricity, the local community protested
and stole most of the tiled roofs.^31
A follow-up progress report found that cash-flow problems also
contributed to the debacle. ‘Spending to date not a true reflection of
work done,’ read this report. It found that ‘actual progress’ was ‘sitting
at 10 % and the project has passed its completion date’. The report
recommended a new completion date of 31 March 2016.^32 Some of the
role-players involved in the project now started to panic. Based on
Khaya Readykit’s original quotes, the less than 200 completed houses
should have cost about R 18 million. As mentioned earlier, the FDC had
by now splurged almost R 60 million on the project. People started to
wonder where the rest of the money had gone.
A series of emails between some of the people working on the project,
sent in October 2015 , raised some serious concerns. One individual
alleged that the funds for the project had dried up because Narsai’s
VNA had stolen the initial upfront payment from the FDC. ‘The Vrede
contract seems to be a textbook case for how not to undertake a
housing contract in South Africa,’ fumed the email’s author. The source
who gave me the emails also alleged VNA had channelled a ‘thank-you
fee’ to Zuma using some of the proceeds of the FDC’s upfront
payment. This was the second time I was told about a ‘thank-you fee’,
by an independent source.
Narsai strongly denied this. He said all the money Tekeweni and VNA
received could be accounted for. But why were there less than 200
completed houses, I asked him. Narsai said VNA and Tekeweni had to
spend much more money on preparing the sites for the houses than
they had anticipated. The local council was supposed to provide
platformed sites for each house, along with roads, water and electricity.