Gangster State

appointed Maono Construction, again without a tender process, to
build the remaining 834 homes. FDC chairperson Hantsi Matseke
owns Maono.
In her budget vote speech in March 2017 , human settlements MEC
Sisi Ntombela discussed the Vrede housing project. Considering that it
had already dragged on for more than three years, her speech was
laughable. ‘Madame Speaker, as part of our efforts to speed up
construction and improve on quality while addressing environmental
concerns, we are exploring alternative building technology,’ she told the
provincial legislature. ‘The advantage of this technology is faster
completion of houses which would enable us to address the backlog
quicker.’^38
Maono Construction’s appointment presented another potential
problem. The FDC, which acted as the Vrede project’s account
administrator and implementing agent, would be paying Maono. In
other words, the state-owned entity Matseke chaired would be paying
millions to her own private company. Neither the FDC nor Matseke nor
the FSHS viewed this as a conflict of interest. ‘All PHP projects are
paid for by the FDC on behalf of the Department of Human
Settlements. This is why the previous contractors and Maono would be
paid by the FDC,’ Matseke told me. ‘This relationship between the
Department of Human Settlements and the FDC cannot be changed
simply because Maono has now been appointed to the project.’ She
further claimed that she only interacted with the FDC ‘at board level’
and did not have any ‘operational responsibilities’. ‘In compliance with
the applicable requirements, I declared Maono’s PHP appointment to
the FDC board and no conflict of interest was raised by the FDC
board,’ she insisted.