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- The former head of the Department of Human Settlements in the Free State, Mpho Mokoena, claims that former MEC Mosebenzi Zwane told him to resign if he did not want to implement his plans.
- This week, the commission delves into the R1 billion Free State housing scheme.
- Mokoena said Zwane gave her a list of 106 contractors to name.
The former head of the Free State human settlements department has told the state’s capture investigation that the former human settlements MEC Mosebenzi Zwane told him to resign if he opposed his “solution” of spending the allocated one billion rand in housing to prevent the national department from claiming it.
Mpho Mokoena testified before the commission on Tuesday.
He said that in October 2010, Zwane called a special meeting to talk to them about a “solution” to the department’s lack of spending on the housing subsidy. According to Mokoena, Zwane’s solution was that they should buy construction materials, so that the service providers could start working.
“I said this is illegal, you can’t pay first before you get the service,” he said, adding that Zwane had sent his adviser to investigate the legitimacy of the plan.
“I said I don’t feel comfortable with it. I don’t agree that we do this plan of his because it is on the verge of illegality.”
Mokoena said that when she told Zwane that she didn’t agree to the plan, they told her that she could resign.
He also allegedly said that if he quit, he would lose his job and his house would be “taken over by the banks” and his children would not go to school.
“It was obvious that he was saying I should quit because I don’t want to implement his plan. It was a threat to kick me out of the position I was in or out of work,” Mokoena testified. He told the commission that Zwane had approached him with a list of 106 contractors that he wanted him to approve.
“My look at the list was that I saw many companies… for the first time and as a person who has been working in the province for years, I realized that no, something is wrong here.
“So I asked him ‘Why do you have so many new contractors with so many units, because for us, a new contractor we give him 200 or less not more than 200?’ and he said ‘This is my plan, this is the document that I have the power to assign and these are the people that I’m assigning.’
READ: ANALYSIS | The billion rand housing plan that paved the way for future state capture
Mokoena said her team did not know most of the contractors on the list, claiming that three companies on the list were “very close” to Zwane.
He testified about the department’s cash flow projection document that was compiled in October 2010.
The projection featured the completion of several thousand units at a total cost of more than R1 billion.
When asked if it was realistic, Mokoena said no.
He told the commission that they knew they were not going to spend the one billion rand in three months.
The documents were to be turned over to the National Department to persuade it not to withdraw the housing budgets allocated to the Free State.
But Supreme Court Vice President Raymond Zondo, who chairs the commission, told Mokoena that they were misrepresenting the facts to the national department about the ability to achieve their goal.
When asked why they misrepresented the facts, he said he did not have the answer.
Zondo said: “It’s worrying because you were the HOD, that’s a very responsible position and you have certain responsibilities, you’re dealing with taxpayer money, [and] Under his leadership, the department had not built a single house in October 2010, six months after the financial year.
“And now you come up with a document that distorts the situation, you send it to the national department to prevent the national department from taking the money and giving it to other provinces that are prepared to work.
“That was wrong, right [it]? Should [not] has passed.”
READ ALSO | State Capture Investigation: Spotlight Falls on Free State R1 Billion Housing Project
In response, Mokoena said, “That chair was wrong, I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have misrepresented the facts because we didn’t have the capacity for what we put here.”
He told Zondo that if he had said no to a certain decision, the money could have been saved.
Towards the end of Tuesday’s proceedings, Mokoena testified that not a single project was completed.
Instead, we had many more foundations in different areas and in the province, rather than full houses.
“For me, we didn’t achieve anything in terms of completed projects. Even though we spent so much money on materials that we bought. And in going up and down, paying officials to do inspections. We didn’t achieve what we wanted we were supposed to achieve.”
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