Johannesburg - A subsidary of the country’s largest technology group, EOH Holdings, bankrolled the ANC in Johannesburg just as the City of Johannesburg had a tender to upgrade its IT infrastructure, the Zondo Commission into State Capture heard on Wednesday.
ENS Forensics managing director Steven Powell told the commission there were a lot of donation requests around the time of the adjudication of the tender. He said the 2016 tender to upgrade the city’s SAP system was worth R404 million including value-added tax.
”It’s just unheard of, it’s just wrong,” said Powell.
He told commission chairperson Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo that the subsidiary, EOH Mthombo, received intelligence that the City of Johannesburg was about to advertise the SAP upgrade tender.
According to Powell, EOH’s revenue from the City of Johannesburg was R250m a year and the company had a full technical and political strategy for the contract.
He said part of the political strategy was meeting with former mayor Parks Tau’s “people”.
Tau is now the deputy co-operative governance and traditional affairs minister and was Johannesburg mayor until 2016.
According to Powell, in October 2014, the ANC in Johannesburg received R1.5m from EOH ahead of its regional conference.
Powell said there was regular solicitation of donations by current Johannesburg mayor and ANC regional chairperson Geoff Makhubo, who was regional treasurer at the time.
He said tenders were granted in exchange for donations.
Makhubo’s company, Molelwane Consulting, also received donations from EOH and no formal tender process was conducted before the tenders were awarded to EOH, according to Powell.
The ANC Tshwane region also requested assistance from EOH to pay for its service providers within a week ahead of its conference in September 2014.
Powell testified that EOH has reported what ENS Forensics found during its investigation to the Hawks in October 2019 in terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.
Political Bureau