The then MEC for human settlements, Olly Mlamleli, was also part of
the delegation. She had come to Cuba to interview and recruit thirty
Cuban engineers for deployment in Bloemfontein and other
municipalities in the province. This initiative would later draw
widespread criticism after it came to light that the cost of employing
and accommodating the Cuban engineers over a period of three years
would wipe out R 110 million from the provincial fiscus.^2 Moreover,
according to news reports, the engineers could not speak English well,
and most of them apparently did not do much work once they arrived
at the various municipalities.^3
The businesspeople accompanying Magashule, meanwhile, were
supposedly present as part of a joint effort by the Cuban province of
Matanzas and South Africa’s Free State province to ‘facilitate and
promote economic and commercial links between businessmen and
enterprises of the respective provinces, thus contributing to the
development of this important sector between the two countries’.^4
One businessman not named in the official briefing document but who
was present in Cuba at the same time as the South African delegation
was Igo Mpambani. Documents in the IgoFiles show that he arrived in
Cuba just two hours after Magashule and his fellow travellers from the
Free State. His presence was not a coincidence and he was certainly
not in Havana to enjoy a Caribbean holiday. The purpose of
Mpambani’s visit was to process the first invoices for a R 255 -million
contract from Magashule’s provincial government for auditing houses
with asbestos roofs.
How this asbestos auditing contract came about is pertinent to this
story.
nora
(Nora)
#1