By Warda Meyer
A mining company whose director, John Fikile Block, is a senior member of the Northern Cape cabinet, has been illegally extracting salt worth millions of rands on a state-owned farm near Upington.
Four years after another company, Saamwerk Soutwerke, got the right to mine the R80 million Vrysoutpan - and three months after the Kimberley High Court ruled that Saamwerk's claim was legitimate - it has been unable to access the site.
Block, who is also the ANC's provincial chairman in the Northern Cape, is a co-director of SA Salt Works, which is now challenging the Kimberley High Court ruling.
And until the appeal is heard later this month, no one can operate at the site.
Key aspects of the scandal include:
- In December, Kimberley High Court Judge H J Lacock found that, for four years, Block's company, SA Salt Works, had been operating in terms of a mining permit that was forged, possibly with the connivance of the Northern Cape's Department of Mineral Resources.
- The court found that between 2007 and 2009, SA Salt Works illegally removed salt worth R8m from the Vrysoutpan reserve.
- The company that has had the right to mine the pan for the past five years, Saamwerk Soutwerke, estimates it has lost R20m.
- Saamwerk's legal adviser, Gawie Hendriksz, said he had received a death threat related to his investigations into the affair.
Block, while MEC for Transport, Roads and Public Works, was found to have used about R50 000 in public funds for private trips - including a visit to Cape Town for the 2003 jazz festival.
Block was forced to resign, only to be "forgiven" by the ANC after making a public confession - and was subsequently acquitted of fraud in the Kimberley Regional Court.
Block's partners in SA Salt Works are Upington's ANC mayor Gift van Staden, businessman Andre Johan Blaauw and his elderly mother, Cornelia Blaauw.
SA Salt Works was awarded a permit to mine at Vrysoutpan between 2003 and 2005. When it did not renew the permit in 2005, Saamwerk was given the right to mine the pan - a right which it has been unable to exercise as SA Salt Works continued to mine on its forged permit.
now Saamwerk is instituting a civil suit against the Northern Cape Department of Mineral Resources and SA Salt Works.
Saamwerk is claiming about R20m in damages and losses on the basis of the province's alleged failure to enforce the company's permit, and to prevent Block's company from mining in defiance of the law.
The Saamwerk suit follows a high court ruling in December affirming the legitimacy of Saamwerk's permit and declaring the SA Salt Works permit bogus.
Judge Lacock accepted expert forensic evidence presented by Saamwerk that three different printers had been used to produce the SA Salt Works permit. He also accepted that Salt Works's permit number did not match those on record and ordered a criminal investigation.
Investigating officer Captain Johan Strydom, of the Commercial Crimes Unit in the Northern Cape, confirmed this week that investigations were continuing, but declined to give details of the charges and the suspects.
Hendriksz told Weekend Argus that legal costs since 2007, together with the damages and losses suffered by the company while SA Salt Works continued to mine the pan, amounted to several millions of rands.
He added that Saamwerk had also been required to pay rent between 2005 and 2010, while not being able to begin operations.
Judge Lacock ruled that SA Salt Works and the Department of Mineral Resources would have to pay Saamwerk's costs.
Hendricksz said: "We are busy with legal consultation to reclaim an estimated R20m in damages and losses."
Forensic auditors were calculating total damages.
Hendriksz said officials who had been initially co-operative in affirming Saamwerk's claim ceased to help when it became clear that prominent politicians were implicated.
One of Saamwerk Soutwerke's partners, Mongile Gubula, said it had become a trend in the Northern Cape that "people who ask questions and speak out against corruption are receiving death threats".
Referring to the threat to Hendricksz, he said a case of intimidation had been lodged with the police.
Hendriksz confirmed that he had received a threatening phone call from a number somewhere in Bulgaria.
"A man with a heavy foreign accent warned me that I should stop investigating politicians, telling me I was on a shortlist to be shot."
The DA's caucus chairman in the Northern Cape legislature, Dirk Stubbe, also called for an investigation into Block's conduct.
Stubbe said the premier should investigate allegations against Block and place him on compulsory leave until the investigation was concluded.
Meanwhile the matter hangs in limbo. Despite the high court's endorsement of its rights, Saamwerk has yet to start mining. Although SA Saltworks has finally ceased mining in compliance with Judge Lacock's December order, the company has applied to appeal parts of the ruling and the matter will be heard on April 19. Until it is finalised, Saamwerk cannot begin mining.
Block referred all inquiries to the offices of SA Saltworks - which failed to respond to Weekend Argus.
He also refused to comment on the allegations against him.
The national spokesman for the Department of Mineral Resources, Jeremy Michaels, said the matter was "sub judice".
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