Gangster State by Pieter-Louis Myburgh

Author:Pieter-Louis Myburgh [Myburgh, Pieter-Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: corruption, Jacob Zuma, Free State, Guptas, ANC, Gupta, state capture, Ace Magashule, tenders, African National Congress
ISBN: 9781776093748
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2019-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

16

Zuma’s Vrede ‘thank-you fee’

If one were to map the Gupta family’s state-capture exploits, the tiny Free State town of Vrede would feature as a prominent point of interest, along with Dubai, Saharanpur, Saxonwold, Sun City and their former coal mines in Mpumalanga.

The Vrede dairy scandal is one of the most notorious examples of how state resources were allegedly plundered by friends of Jacob Zuma and his ally in the Free State, Ace Magashule. But Vrede also fell prey to another, previously unknown scandal, one that appears to bear Magashule’s and Zuma’s fingerprints. In this chapter, I reveal how more than R220 million in taxpayers’ money was earmarked for a disaster-ridden housing development on the town’s outskirts. A band of politically connected contractors were appointed to build 1 000 houses for some of Vrede’s poorest inhabitants, yet five years after the project began, less than 200 houses were finished. But of greater concern was the fact that, while digging up information on this deal, I began to hear rumours that one of the contractors had channelled a R2-million

‘thank-you fee’ to Zuma. At first, I didn’t make much of this, but information I would later obtain made me pause.

The saga took place while the public and the media were focused on the infamous dairy scandal playing out around the corner from the housing project. As usual, some of the country’s most destitute citizens paid the price for what appears to have been a toxic combination of mismanagement, incompetence and possible corruption.

The saga begins in Jacob Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal,

where, in 2010, a company called Khaya Readykit started doing work for government. 1 Khaya Readykit specialises in alternative building technologies (ABT). It has a patent on special timber wall panels that are manufactured in factories and then transported to building sites, where they are erected on top of concrete foundations, and covered with a binding agent and a few layers of plaster. According to the company’s website, this method allows it to finish new structures much faster than traditional building contractors can. In addition, the buildings are allegedly just as durable as houses with brick walls, but cheaper to put together. 2 The technique can be used for low-cost housing, clinics and classrooms.

Khaya Readykit’s promise of cheaper, better structures caught the attention of officials in KwaZulu-Natal. To navigate the province’s highly politicised construction environment, the company hired a

‘contracts agent’ for its work with government. 3 Considering the function this person was required to perform, however, he could be described as a ‘fixer’ of sorts. This role was assigned to businessman Vikash Narsai, who appears to have operated on the periphery of Zuma’s circle.

Narsai’s company, VNA Consulting, brands itself as a ‘multi-disciplinary professional services consultancy’ in South Africa’s ‘built environment’. 4 VNA is also unabashedly pro-ANC. In 2012, the company bought a full-page advert in the Progressive Business Forum’s magazine, Progressive Leader. Next to an image of the ANC

flag superimposed onto a map of South Africa, Narsai congratulates the party on its 100th birthday, saying that VNA is ‘a proud supporter of the African National Congress ideology’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.