Despite not owning a single water tanker, two companies linked to ANC Tshwane heavyweights Eugene “Bonzo” Modise and Rhulani James Shelenge scored R31.7m for water trucking services during the city’s R777m emergency water supply project.
A Sunday Times investigation has found that in financial 2025, the Tshwane metro paid Best Enough Trading & Projects 669 — a company owned by Shelenge his wife, Ntombifuthi Valeria Shelenge — R30m to truck water.
Shelenge, also a pastor, was elected treasurer of the ANC in the Tshwane region in December. Little is publicly known about Shelenge’s previous political career, but in ANC regional politics such senior positions are typically occupied by individuals with long‑standing, active involvement in local branch politics.
The metro also paid Gofa-One — a company of which Modise had previously been a director — R1.7m for trucking water in financial 2024.
Modise, the ANC chair in the Tshwane region, is Tshwane deputy mayor and also MMC for finance, a position that gives him significant influence over the metro’s spending decisions.
Although Modise stepped down as a director of Gofa-One shortly before he became a councillor in Tshwane in March 2023, the entity’s registered address is still his family home in Mabopane, northwest of Pretoria. Modise, together with his late mother Nelly Modise, founded the company in 2010.
The Sunday Times pieced together the payments to Gofa‑One and Best Enough and the extent of their involvement in water trucking by scrutinising Tshwane’s financial 2025 tanker‑spending, internal financial records, invoices and company‑registry data.
The investigation discovered that neither Best Enough nor Gofa‑One owns water tankers, raising questions about how they were able to secure the lucrative contracts.
Information obtained from the electronic National Traffic Information System shows that the only vehicle registered to Gofa-One is an earthmoving machine, a backhoe front loader.
Invoices show that officials paid Gofa-One a total of R819,000 in four tranches in July 2023, the first month of the metro’s 2024 financial year. By the end of November, the company had been paid more than R1.7m as the city resorted to intensive use of water tankers due to infrastructure problems. The invoices ranged between R76,500 and R451,000.
Modise did not respond to e-mails and WhatsApp messages and did not answer calls to his two listed cellphone numbers.
While Best Enough is the registered owner of six trucks, none of them appears to be a water tanker. Shelenge also did not respond to requests for comment.
The financial records reviewed by the Sunday Times show that in financial 2025, the Tshwane metro paid R777m to about 40 companies to truck water to needy communities.
This spending is now the subject of a probe by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) after city manager Johann Mettler roped in the elite investigators to probe allegations that the council has been captured by a mafia‑style water‑tanker cartel.
Although the SIU typically launches investigations only after a presidential proclamation gives the go-ahead, regulations allow government departments, state‑owned entities and municipalities to request the unit to help them conduct their own internal inquiries.
SIU spokesperson Ngwako Motsieng said: “We can confirm the SIU has entered into a secondment agreement with the City of Tshwane to investigate the procurement of water tankers. The secondment commenced on March 1 and the team is analysing documents received from the city.”
Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba confirmed an investigation was under way. “The office of the city manager is investigating as per a request from the executive mayor/mayoral committee based on the R777m debacle. The SIU has agreed to second staff to assist with this investigation.”
SIU acting head Leonard Lekgetho recently told the Sunday Times he was gathering documents that would help the unit apply for a proclamation to launch a full-blown investigation into water tanker contracts in Tshwane and the City of Johannesburg.
The unit’s focus on the issue comes as collapsing water infrastructure forces municipalities across the country to rely heavily on tanker services, creating fertile ground for corruption.
A report about the state of South Africa’s water infrastructure, released by the auditor-general last December, found that councils were increasingly relying on trucked water to service residents. It revealed that in financial 2024, municipalities spent R2.32bn on water tanker services.
According to a submission contained in documents prepared for the SIU last month, Mettler asked the unit to establish whether:
- irregularities occurred in the services rendered by water tanker companies;
- the metro received value for money; and
- irregularities occurred in payments made to water tanker companies, including unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
The SIU was also asked to investigate allegations of fraud and corruption in the allocation of contracts to the companies and to identify anomalies and red flags in the procurement and appointment of water tanker companies.
The submission reveals that Tshwane’s internal legal department opposed the appointment of the SIU, arguing that the investigation should be conducted by the metro’s own audit and risk department.
The magnitude of the expenditure, combined with the potential for corruption and maladministration, presents a material risk to the city’s financial sustainability and undermines public confidence in its governance structures
— Johann Mettler, Tshwane city manager
However, Mettler overruled the legal department. “Given the sensitivity and seriousness of the allegations, the potential financial exposure and the need to restore public trust, I hereby override the negative comments received from group legal services and formally request that the SIU be appointed to conduct this investigation. This ... is necessary to ensure transparency, accountability and the protection of public funds,” he said.
“The magnitude of the expenditure, combined with the potential for corruption and maladministration, presents a material risk to the city’s financial sustainability and undermines public confidence in its governance structures.”
The metro’s accounting files examined by the Sunday Times show that officials initially budgeted R78m for water tankers for financial 2025. However, when the council adjusted its budget in February 2025, the water tanker allocation was boosted by R242m, taking the total to R320m.
But by the end of the financial year in June 2025, the municipality had spent a staggering R777m trucking water, incurring over-expenditure of R457m.
Bokaba, however, said verified payments to service providers for the period amounted to only R621m. The R156m gap between that figure and the R777m amount was under review, as preliminary checks had flagged possible duplications and administrative errors in the city’s records.
In financial 2024, Tshwane initially budgeted R51m for water tankers and later more than doubled this to R105m. By the end of the financial year, the metro had overspent this total by R35m.
For the current financial year, which started on July 1 2025, Tshwane budgeted R236m for water tankers. By October the metro had already blown R195m of this.
Bokaba said the city had implemented several cost-containment measures since December to reduce reliance on water tankers. “These include reducing semi-permanent tanker deployments from seven to four days a week and reducing the number of contracted trucks by 34, which has resulted in an estimated monthly saving of approximately R12m.”
The metro had embarked on an aggressive drive to procure its own trucks so it could escape the grip of the water tanker mafia, he said.
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