Mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe has denied in an affidavit that he was involved in the evaluation of the bids for emergency power, the lion’s share of which was won by a company majority owned by the controversial Turkish company Karpowership.
An unhappy bidder, DNG Power Holdings, has asked the high court in Pretoria to set aside the determination of the preferred bidders and wants to be selected in place of Karpowership SA.
The tender relates to the government’s Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Programme (RMIPPP), which is intended to alleviate SA’s power constraints in the shortest possible time.
In his affidavit, DNG founder and CEO Aldworth Mbalati made two allegations specific to Mantashe. The first was that he was informed by a source that a close family member of Mantashe —believed to be his wife, Nolwandle — had been involved in facilitating an extension of the tender submission date, which he claimed worked to the advantage of Karpowership.
The second claim was that he was called to a meeting at a Pretoria restaurant with two top officials of the department as well as two other individuals, one of whom was a “familial relation” of Mantashe.
At this meeting, Mbalati says he was offered “help” with his bid. He was later told that he would get nothing as he had not co-operated.
In his affidavit, which is a confirmatory affidavit to the main one filed by head of the IPP office, Bernard Magoro, Mantashe states that “no close family member approached me in relation to the extension of the bid notification date” and declared that “as far as I am aware there was no undue influence in the RMIPPP”.
However, the two officials referred to by Mbalati — department director-general Thabo Mokoena and a deputy director-general, Tseliso Maqubela — confirm that they did meet Mbalati at the Pretoria restaurant. Both have deposed confirmatory affidavits. Both deny that they discussed the tender or that they went to the restaurant with the purpose of doing so.
Mokoena states that he was invited to the meeting by an associate, Luvuyo Makasi, who wanted to introduce him to an energy investor. Also present at the meeting, says Mokoena, besides his colleague Maqubela was a businessperson by the name of Vuyani Gaga.
Mokoena says that Mbalati asked for an extension to the RMIPPP bid, something in which neither he nor Maqubela were involved. While Mokoena and Maqubela insist that neither of the two businesspeople they met have any relationship to Mantashe and that this has been confirmed to them by the minister, Gaga does have a history of association with Nolwandle. The two owned a business together in 2014, which was the successful subcontractor in the now infamous R600m Eastern Cape pit toilet scandal.
Gaga was subsequently arrested for his part and charged with fraud, corruption and money laundering.
Investigative journalists amaBhungane reported this week that his trial is still expected to go ahead. Gaga has also previously claimed to be Mantashe’s nephew in trying to muscle into a mining deal, a relationship that Mantashe has denied.
Makasi, who was briefly head of the board of the Central Energy Fund, was sacked from the state-owned company in 2019 after allegations that he had tried to solicit a bribe from oil traders involved in a dispute with the state over the sale of the strategic oil stocks.
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