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But Zwane turned the tables on Monday, saying the matter stopped with Mokoena, as an accountant.
According to testimony, Zwane came up with the idea of the prepayment plan in late 2010 in an attempt to ensure that the department spent its annual housing budget. This was after then-minister for human settlements Tokyo Sexwale warned that the province’s under-spending was worrisome and that the province risked losing the subsidy to the best-performing provinces if it did not spend the money.
But Zwane held a meeting with the contractors and then brought up the idea of advance payment, which would have the department purchase construction material for contractors directly from suppliers.
When this was implemented, R600m was spent as part of the plan for “little or no benefit to the department,” according to the commission’s testing leader, Paul Pretorius.
Pretorius told Zwane on Monday that the plan was, in fact, illegal and in contravention of the Public Finance Management Act.
Zwane disagreed: “Payment in advance or prepayment in terms of South African law is not an illegal matter. If you have an advance there must be a contract that indicates that you are going to make an advance in which case you must administer an advance ”.
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