Gangster State

Three days later, he drove back to Bloemfontein, where he spent two
nights in a guesthouse. During this time, he withdrew a further R 55
000 from FNB ATMs, including R 35 000 at the Brandwag ATM
around the corner from Free State House. According to his diary,
Magashule was in Bloemfontein during Mpambani’s latest visit to the
city. Furthermore, emails in the IgoFiles show that the premier’s office
was in contact with the businessman during this time.
Of the R 12. 5 million Mpambani transferred into Diamond Hill’s
account on 11 August, only R 600 000 remained the following week.
Once again, Mpambani had made large payments for things like
‘engineering services’. One such payment, for R 3. 1 million, went to
Kato Motsoeneng, the former Tswelopele and Mohokare municipal
manager and co-founder with Mpambani of Diamond Hill Trading 71.
Over the entire period of the asbestos auditing saga, Mpambani
channelled more than R 5 million to Motsoeneng or to Katfin Financial
Solutions, another of Motsoeneng’s companies. Mpambani mostly
marked the payments as ‘engineering services’, although neither
Motsoeneng nor Katfin appears to be registered with engineering
bodies.
Sources from the Free State told me Motsoeneng was once a key
mover in the province’s political circles, until he had a bitter fight with
Magashule over tenders. I wanted to ask Motsoeneng about his
windfall from Mpambani, but he died in 2016. He was forty-six years
old. His wife told me that he was hospitalised after a fall and later
passed away in a Johannesburg hospital. She did not want to talk about
her late husband’s dealings.
By late August 2015 , Mpambani was increasingly dividing his time
between Johannesburg and Bloemfontein. After a short stay in