The arrogance that peppered tenderpreneur Edwin Sodi’s testimony at the Zondo commission this week has likely dissipated following Wednesday’s arrest of six of the seven alleged masterminds behind a R200m asbestos audit project in the Free State.
Those apprehended can only be named once they have appeared in court. However, they are believed to include current and former high-level government officials. If so, the arrests are highly significant in that it is the first time officials have been arrested due directly to evidence led at the commission.
This will give South Africans renewed hope that the millions taxpayers have poured into the commission will not have been for nothing, and that further arrests are on the cards.
Sodi’s evidence was also significant in that he detailed payments made directly to the ANC and high-profile politicians. He maintains there is no link between these payments and his company, Blackhead Consulting, winning government contracts worth hundreds of millions of rand, mostly from the departments of human settlements in Gauteng and the Free State.
It’s an argument few are buying.
The suspects are likely to be charged under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act (Precca). The general offence of corruption under Precca is giving, or offering to give, someone in a position of power gratification to act in a certain manner. Gratification can include money, a donation, a vote, a service or a favour, and employment. The act makes it a crime to offer or accept money or favours in order to influence the award of a tender.
The extent of Sodi’s largesse to the politically connected was laid bare at the commission this week, when he brushed off questions about payments to several high-ranking ANC leaders by describing the recipients as “my friend” or “business partner”. He also admitted that he generously donated to the ANC, particularly during the 2014 election campaign, “because I grew up in the ANC”.
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The ANC leaders flagged included health minister Zweli Mkhize, to whom he paid R6.5m, labour and employment minister Thulas Nxesi, who was paid R45,000, ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile (R371,000) and deputy minister Zizi Kodwa (R174,000). And just to illustrate what a kindhearted, upstanding citizen he is, he clarified that the money paid to Nxesi was actually for a disadvantaged child.
Sodi is under scrutiny for how Blackhead was awarded a R255m contract for the eradication of asbestos roofs in the Free State. He had subcontracted the work for R41m and the subcontractor further subcontracted for just more than R20m.
A public protector report released in May 2020 found that the contract had been unlawful and that of the R230m paid to Blackhead, only R21.3m went towards covering the costs of the project.
As sickening as it was to listen to Sodi’s brazen testimony, his case is by no means unique.
He is one of many politically connected BEE tenderpreneurs who have for years been greasing the palms of those in power, who in turn feed them with government contracts worth hundreds of millions, if not billions.
The Institute of Race Relations’ Anthea Jeffery wrote in BizNews this month that the most common malfeasance within the ANC is probably the major inflating of prices by BEE tenderpreneurs in contracts with the government at every level.
“This is not confined to the recent Covid-19 contracts for the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other goods and services. Rather, it generally afflicts some 50% of the state’s R800bn public procurement budget – as the Treasury’s acting chief procurement officer Willie Mathebula told the Zondo commission at its start in August 2018,” Jeffery wrote.
Just how much of that money has gone into ANC coffers we will probably never know.
The case has also again highlighted the importance of enforcing transparency in political party funding.
Former constitutional development minister Valli Moosa wrote in the Sunday Times on Sunday that a grave shortcoming of SA’s constitution is that it does not prohibit the practice of political parties keeping their sources of funding secret. It also places no limitation on who a party may accept money from or in what amounts.
This allows people like Sodi to make illegitimate millions, while transferring truckloads of funding from government coffers into party pockets.
It is heartening that law-enforcement agencies are finally working together to make inroads into bringing these culprits to justice. But there is still a huge amount of ground to cover before we see the end of the age of impunity for corruption.
Hopefully more such arrests are in the pipeline based on evidence given at the commission.
For instance, there must surely be much interest in former water and sanitation minister Nomvula Mokonyane and the shiny new R3m Aston Martin she was gifted for her 50th birthday, as well as that oh-so-intimate little 40th birthday bash Bosasa hosted for her at a Krugersdorp guesthouse in 2003.
SA will never grow if this industrial-scale corruption is allowed to continue unchecked. But to see results, the under-resourced NPA needs to bolster its manpower so that it has the power to secure airtight cases. This is where taxpayers’ money needs to be invested if we are have any hope of dousing this scourge.
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