The sounds of silence
Text: Mandy de Waal and Jon Pienaar. Article from the June 2014 issue of Noseweek magazine.
Officialdom remains tight-lipped about the violent death of a good man who knew too much.
May 11 marked the first anniversary of the death of Moses Tshake, a whistle-blower in the employ of the Free State government. He had been asking questions about millions of rands paid out on agricultural projects by the provincial government and probing municipal maladministration when he was hijacked in Bloemfontein, brutally assaulted and left for dead on 22 February last year.
Tshake died in May after lingering for three months in hospital.
“My son died for fuck-all. It is heart-breaking,” says Tshake’s father, David Chaka. His anguish is compounded by frustration that nothing is being done about his son’s murder.
Because of a Home Affairs bungle, the two don’t share the same surname: Moses’s surname was incorrectly recorded as “Tshake” on his birth certificate – something he’d been trying to resolve at the time of his death.
Chaka says: “The police don’t phone us. We get nothing from them. The investigating officer doesn’t let us know what’s going on. My son was a good man. He was in the service of this country. He did good work for the people of South Africa. And now? What now?
“We opened a case with the police and they just don’t find his murderers. We keep on phoning the investigating officer but nothing happens. We just sit and we wait. Please help me get the police to do something,” he pleads.
Tshake was an auditor, employed by the Free State government and tasked with helping to manage financial ethics and adherence to good governance. Volksblad reported that he had been overseeing audits for the provincial department of agriculture, probing payments on controversial projects.
But Tshake was also “working with the municipalities, lots of municipalities” says his sister Joyce Chaka. “After he died we went to his flat. There was a letter there that said he had to appear in a court case for his work. I don’t know where that letter went. The police must have it now,” she says.
Numerous calls to Investigating Officer Domkrag Mathibela, elicited only a referral to SAPS’s PR department.
In 2012 Tshake headed the audit committee tasked with trying to restore financial order at the Setsoto Municipality, which had been thrust into the global spotlight after the death of service-delivery activist, Andries Tatane a year earlier. He had been shot with rubber bullets while pleading with police not to turn their water cannon on the elderly.
Seven policemen charged with Tatane’s murder were subsequently acquitted by the Ficksburg Regional Court. But the public outcry prompted former Free State MEC for Cooperative Governance, Mamike Qabathe, to commission a confidential report. Subsequently the Setsoto Municipality, under which Ficksburg falls, was found to be riddled with corruption.
Tshake, who was the Audit and Performance Audit Committee chairperson for the Setsoto Municipality, had been responsible for helping restore fiscal discipline. But he was not only involved in trying to contain corruption at local municipalities. He was also employed as internal auditor in the Free State department of agriculture. One of his colleagues, who did not wish to be named, said Tshake was “a good guy, one of the few, an exceptional person”.
A source who plays a senior oversight role in agriculture in the province, told Noseweek: “Another official in the [provincial] department of agriculture was also seriously assaulted last year. They are all too terrified to talk. It appears that nobody has been appointed to Tshake’s post and no progress has been made with the investigations he had been pursuing.”
Tshake wasn’t the only person at the provincial agricultural department to have been hijacked. In April last year, when Tshake was in hospital, a departmental manager, Vuyisile Mlambo, was hijacked as well. Noseweek called Mlambo a couple of times to discuss the incident, but he refused even to acknowledge the occurrence. Noseweek heard from a Free State government source, who also asked to remain anonymous, that yet another member of the agriculture department had been beaten up earlier this year.
Tshake had been investigating projects of the province’s “revitalisation” campaign, called Mohoma Mobung, when he was attacked.
Free State Premier, Ace Magashule, has a penchant for setting up massive private-public partnerships with grand names. Mohoma Mobung is supposed to revitalise agriculture.
But Mohoma Mobung, is being used to siphon hundreds of millions of rands from the treasury and get a big flow of funds from the private sector too.
The sales schpiel for Mohoma Mobung? The Free State would use the project to fight poverty by creating jobs and improving food security. But the stinking truth about Mohoma Mobung was revealed in a series of Mail & Guardian exposes about a R570m dairy project in the town of Vrede that had ties to the Gupta family.
Foreign funds were also earmarked for Mohoma Mobung. In April 2010 Premier Magashule led a delegation on a trip to China and in 2012 a Chinese delegation visited the Free State to discuss investment. At the time Mosebenzi Zwane, then MEC of Agriculture, told the local news site, Public Eye Online: “The Chinese are very interested in investing in agricultural projects in the province.” He added that they hoped to raise from R1.2bn to R5bn from China for Mohoma Mobung.
What happened to the hundreds of millions of rands from local taxpayers, businesses and China for Mohoma Mobung? The Mail & Guardian’s investigative division, AmaBhungane, reported that, in December 2012, a South African-registered company, Estina (Pty) Ltd, was given the 4,400ha farm Krynaauwslust outside Vrede on a 99-year, rent-free lease. By May last year the Free State agriculture department had financed the dairy project to the tune of R30m – a figure set to rise to R342m over three years.
In October, a national Treasury forensic team questioned Free State agriculture officials after several irregularities were discovered, including that the deal flouted Treasury rules.
“Approval for the project was rushed through despite… no budget, no feasibility study and no urgency,” the M&G’s AmaBhungane reported.
AmaBhungane found several links to the Gupta family, and that Atul Gupta was involved in negotiations to buy a home in Vrede for use by the dairys coordinator – previously special secretary to Shivpal Singh Yadav, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in India, which is the Guptas’ former home state. Yadav was also embroiled in the Guptagate wedding saga.
Die Volksblad reported that Atul Gupta visited the farm regularly. The newspaper pegs the Guptas as major players in the project, but said people on the ground had been instructed not to disclose the family’s involvement.
AmaBhungane found that the company’s registered address was the same as that of several other Gupta businesses. The only director of Estina was an IT sales manager with links to the Gupta family: Kamal Vasram.
Estina acquired a 49% share in this project, and 51% was earmarked for small-scale farmers, “only identified recently and the official could not explain how they were chosen”, says the M&G.
The Free State agriculture department denied the Guptas’ involvement. But Gupta spokesperson Gary Naidoo admitted that a Gupta subsidiary, Linkway, was involved with the dairy.
Die Volksblad reported that Linkway had consulted on the project and that its two directors, Ashok Narayan and Ronica Govender, were also directors of other Gupta companies: JIC Mining and Sahara Systems.
Following the media fallout, and while the Treasury team was investigating the dairy in October, Vasram left Estina and created another company for the agricultural project. This private firm was registered as the Mohoma Mobung Dairy Project, the same name as the Mohoma Mobung Project used by the Free State to milk its taxpayers and to try to get foreign billions.
In a written answer to questions raised by the DA about the project, former Cooperative Governance MEC, Mamike Qabathe, now MEC of agriculture, said R2.6m had been spent on a security gate and guardhouse; R1.2m on a 2km gravel road; over R2.5m for tools and implements; R30m for the dairy and processing plant; and R6.2m for 351 cows. In February, AmaBhungane discovered the carcasses of 30 of the cows in a ditch near a river used by locals for drinking water.
Another controversial Free State agricultural initiative is the Gariep fish hatchery in which China has injected R45m. But when Magashule, national agriculture minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson and a Chinese delegation returned to the project in November, more than R100m was missing. The Free State Times reported that the province had launched a probe into what had become of the missing millions spent on the project.
In August last year the DA directed questions about Tshake’s murder to Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa. His written response stated: “The victim was visited several times in hospital but could not shed light on what happened because he could not speak… leads are being followed up… it is hoped that, through the investigation… the motive will be determined.”
But Tshake’s sister says police did take a statement: “Moses said he didn’t know these people, but that they speak Sotho or are Basotho. On the day of the hijacking Moses was able to talk and gave a statement to the police,” says Joyce Chaka, explaining that only after Tshake had had an operation on his throat was he unable to talk. Following that, he was sedated for three months.
“When he woke up, he just cried. He wanted to talk, but after some weeks he started to write,” says Chaka. After the sedation, her brother stopped talking. “Now he’s dead and the police don’t get back to us.”
During Noseweek’s investigation, it came to light that a man called Sello Moses Mthethwa was a director of Sahara Holdings, the holding company for the Gupta family’s IT businesses.
Free State agricultural MEC Qabathe has asked Zuma to help the province fight those who are trying to impede the Gupta-linked dairy project.
In Mahikeng a dejected David Chaka says the Public Protector may be his only hope, but Chaka’s other son, Johnson, has been turned away from the protector’s office. “They want proof of what I have done about the police, and I am being sent to Ipid (Independent Police Investigative Directorate). But what help will I get from Ipid?”
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