Gangster State

In 2013 , the national Department of Human Settlements advertised a
bid for the appointment of a panel of companies to assist the Gauteng
housing department and municipalities with ‘planning and
implementation support’. The companies were referred to as
professional resource teams (PRTs).^5 One of the companies
subsequently appointed to the panel was Johannesburg-based
Blackhead Consulting, which in April 2014 received a letter of
notification from the national department’s director-general, Thabane
Zulu. ‘As you are aware, the services to [be] executed will be needs
based and on an “instruction to perform work” (IPW) basis.
Appointment to a departmental panel is for a period of three years,’
Zulu wrote to Edwin Sodi, Blackhead Consulting’s CEO.^6
Like many of the characters in this saga, Zulu has a colourful past. In
2007 , he crashed his Range Rover in Pietermaritzburg after being
followed by a mysterious car with blue lights. When the police arrived
on the scene, they found almost R 50 000 in his boot.^7 Zulu at the time
claimed the money was his own and there was nothing irregular about
it. In 2010 , he was appointed director-general for human settlements.
According to a report in the Sunday Independent, he formed part of
the South African Social Security Agency’s bid adjudication committee
that in 2011 approved a R 10 -billion bid from the controversial Cash
Paymaster Services to administer social grants. The report alleged that
Zulu had received a ‘bribe’ of R 1. 4 million in relation to the contract.
He strongly denied the allegation.^8
Blackhead’s IPW from Zulu, meanwhile, allowed the company to be
appointed by the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements in
accordance with a needs-based model. In other words, the department
could appoint Blackhead whenever it needed its services without each