Choking on a bitter pill

Some services have ground to a halt as an intervention team sets about cleaning up Limpopo, write Sibongakonke Shoba and Isaac Mahlangu

THREE times a day for the past two weeks, Mighty Bapela has had to bring food for her mother, 68-year-old Makgethwa Maleka, who is a patient at Jane Furse Hospital in Limpopo.

The state hospital, about 130km outside the provincial capital of Polokwane, has suffered food shortages since late December.

"There hasn't been milk for the two weeks my mother has been here," Bapela told the Sunday Times this week, "and the whole hospital is untidy as cleaners say they've run out of cleaning products."

On its visit to the hospital on Thursday, the Sunday Times was denied permission to go beyond the main gate, but Bapela and others who have been through its wards recently paint a horrifying picture.

"You are greeted by a bad smell of urine instead of the normal smell of pills and medicines when you reach the reception area," said Bapela.

The ward that her mother is in - she is at the hospital for a hernia operation - has been without paper towels and soap since the beginning of the year.

The hospital, situated in a semi-rural and poverty stricken area, is one of the Limpopo institutions hardest hit by the power play that followed the national government's decision late last year to take over the running of five provincial government departments in Limpopo.

Amid rumours that they would not be paid, many of the hospital's suppliers stopped delivering goods.

The Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, met suppliers at the Royal Hotel in Polokwane this week , a meeting that came not a moment too soon. On her way into the meeting, a businesswoman pointed at the parking lot: "All these cars will be repossessed soon," she said.

The businesswoman, who asked not to be named for fear of losing future government contracts, said she had not been paid since October.

Her small catering business supplies food to six schools in Tzaneen and the state owes her R500000, she said.

"We might have to close shop. There is no business that can survive without cash flow," she said.

The provincial education department, she said, blamed the nonpayment on the national task team appointed by the national cabinet to run the province's finances.

At a press conference earlier in the day, Gordhan had blamed the confusion on attempts by some within the province to "sabotage" service delivery and undermine the government's intervention.

"I can also say, frankly, that there is sufficient evidence that there have been attempts at sabotaging service delivery in order to blame nondelivery on the national intervention ...

"We are aware of this, and the law enforcement authorities will start acting on this particular question fairly shortly," he told reporters.

At his meeting with the affected suppliers, Gordhan assured them that all those who could provide documentary proof that they had legitimate contracts with the affected departments and that they had delivered services, would be paid.

The unprecedented central government intervention - which has seen the provincial treasury; education; health; public works; and roads and transport departments taken over by the intervention team - came in November amid fears that administration in the province was about to collapse.

An investigation by the task team revealed that no proper controls were in place in the five departments and that they could have illegally paid money to service providers who were not owed money.

The national Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, who formed part of Gordhan's delegation, said his officials had found that provincial government figures showed R138-million needed to be paid to suppliers in December, but only R67-million had been paid because many service providers could not provide the necessary proof.

"If we can't have all the requirements, it is going to be difficult [to pay certain suppliers]. It will be criminal to give money to people without documentation," he said.

But in a year in which the ruling ANC is headed for an elective conference, the intervention and debacle over payments to contractors areviewed with suspicion by some in the provincial government and local ANC structures.

The province is led by premier Cassel Mathale, a close ally and best friend of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, who is heading a campaign to stop President Jacob Zuma being re-elected party leader in December. The cabinet announcement of the takeover, in early December, came just weeks before a provincial ANC conference where Mathale was to be re-elected, fuelling speculation that Zuma was using it to try to harm the premier's chances.

Not only was Mathale re-elected, but Malema was voted in as a member of the provincial executive committee.

Last week, one of the ANC's most senior leaders, treasurer Mathews Phosa, seemed to back the province's view that the intervention was linked to the succession battle when he urged Mathale to raise the matter with Luthuli House.

However, Gordhan this week insisted that the province would have been bankrupt were it not for the national government.

"On November 22, it became clear that the province would not be able to pay teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, service providers and other public-sector employees," he said.

He also revealed that the province would probably end the current financial year with a R2-billion shortfall and that the Limpopo government had tried to extend its overdraft facility by a billion rands after exhausting an existing R757-million overdraft.

"The province has been spending beyond its means. This had to stop in order to get the spending in line with the cash that was available," Gordhan said.

Although Mathale this week adopted a conciliatory approach, pledging to work with the task team, his supporters hope to lobby ANC structures in other provinces for support. A document written by finance MEC David Masondo in December is being circulated among them.

In it, Masondo says that the province "was plunged" into crisis "by the withholding of funds by the national Treasury"."The ploy was to strangulate the province from paying workers their wages, thereby pitting the working class against the provincial administration," Masondo says.

But it remains to be seen whether the document will help Mathale and his comrades win sympathy from the rest of the ANC.

As Gordhan said, evidence that the intervention was necessary is overwhelming: "I can't manufacture these things; facts have spoken for themselves.

"The facts will continue to speak for themselves in coming months."