If Treasury’s intervention ensured cleaner governance at the
department, it was temporary. By the 2017 / 18 financial year, the DPRT
was again in the auditor-general’s bad books. With irregular
expenditure sitting at R 650 million and unauthorised expenditure at
about R 240 million – mostly resulting from dodgy contracts – the
department received a qualified audit opinion.^4 While the auditor-
general’s findings are shocking, the figures do not betray the
brazenness with which departments such as the DPRT were apparently
captured in order to enrich Magashule’s friends and family.
One DPRT insider explained how the alleged capture scheme was
carried out. ‘Ace ensured people from Ngwathe and other northern
municipalities were appointed as supply chain management and
financial officials at our department,’ said this source. He gave me
names of officials from the Ngwathe local municipality (which includes
Parys), who had been moved to the DPRT. They included Norman
Selai, Ngwathe’s former municipal manager, and Makalo Mohale, a
former Ngwathe procurement official and ANC Youth League
chairperson in the Free State. Selai became a chief director at the
DPRT, said my source, but more importantly, he became the
chairperson of the department’s bid adjudication committee and later
the chair of the bid evaluation committee (BEC). Mohale, who once
served as Magashule’s spokesperson,^5 was appointed as a supply chain
manager, according to my source. He was later moved to the FSHS.
Both officials were therefore involved in appointing contractors. ‘That
is how they gained control of the whole tender process,’ my source
claimed. ‘The evaluation committee identifies [would-be contractors]
and makes sure the company that provides kickbacks is in the lead
before the BEC’s recommendation goes to the bid adjudication
nora
(Nora)
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