GCINA NTSALUBA and DIANNE HAWKER
The Department of Public Works offered R50 million to property mogul Roux Shabangu to “walk away” from the controversial Pretoria police headquarters lease.
This allegation is contained in an explosive 60-page affidavit in which Shabangu aims to absolve himself of any wrongdoing in the lease deal which led to the axing of the Public Works minister and the suspension of police commissioner Bheki Cele.
The affidavit is accompanied by more than 900 pages of documents Shabangu believes will exonerate him. Shabangu says former Public Works minister Geoff Doidge tried to get him to abandon the deal soon after Public Protector Thuli Madonsela began investigating.
“I was approached by Doidge to attend a meeting in Durban. Doidge said Public Works would pay (the Roux Property Fund) R50m to walk away from the lease,” said Shabangu.
“I, in no uncertain terms, told them that I would not do so.”
In the affidavit, Shabangu does not mention who else was present or the exact date of the meeting.
He later claims that another meeting took place in September 2010 at OR Tambo International Airport, attended by a delegation from Public Works headed by former director-general Siviwe Dongwana. At the meeting Shabangu said he was again told not to pursue the lease.
Asked to comment on the allegation, Doidge who is now ambassador to Sri Lanka, referred questions to the Public Works minister’s legal adviser, Phillip Masilo.
Masilo said Public Works would only respond to Shabangu’s allegations in court.
The R500m lease agreement has been mired in controversy since Madonsela and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) were asked to investigate alleged corruption.
The deal was cancelled after Madonsela’s findings that Treasury regulations were breached by concluding the contract through a negotiated process instead of public tender.
A second property deal worth R1.1 billion involving Durban police headquarters was also nullified by Madonsela.
It is clear from the court papers that Shabangu intends using the department’s own mistakes, documents and correspondence to clear his name.
He questions why the department kept changing its stance on the deal – first cancelling it, then reinstating it before cancelling it again.
At one point Dongwana and representatives from the State Attorney went so far as to assure his financiers, Nedbank, in a two-and-a-half-hour meeting that the lease would go ahead, despite the investigations by the SIU and Madonsela.
The next day Dongwana assured the bank that the investigations would not be a problem.
“The department further confirms that the outcome of the investigation by the Public Protector and the Special Investigating Unit will have no effect on the validity and enforceability of the lease,” he said in a letter to Nedbank dated November 25, 2010.
Meanwhile, state attorney Moipone Mosidi is trying to rescue the case for Public Works after it was dealt a blow from former acting director-general Sam Vukela.
After being placed on special leave, Vukela submitted a supplementary affidavit that brought into question the basis of the Public Works application.
In the second affidavit, Vukela tells the court the department had negotiated 2 415 of 2 950 leases from 2008 to September 2011 and that it was common practice.
Mosidi is now asking for the second Vukela affidavit to be struck out as inadmissible.
“It was filed by subterfuge and in bad faith, whether his own or that of the (Roux Property Fund)… the affidavit is replete with irrelevant vexatious material: discursive reference to other instances in which it is contended (Public Works) acted with an equal lack of compliance with constitutional and statutory requirements regarding procurement,” Mosidi told the court.