Busisiwe Mkhwebane ignored advice to consider the #GuptaLeaks in her Vrede dairy report, former senior investigator in the public protector’s office, Lufona Ndou, said on Thursday.
The #GuptaLeaks refers to the leak of a tranche of emails from the Gupta-owned Sahara server with correspondence about Gupta brothers, Rajesh, Atul and Ajay, who siphoned billions of rand from the government and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by leveraging their ties with former president Jacob Zuma.
They had business partnerships, including in mining and media, with Zuma’s son Duduzane and with the son of former Free State premier Ace Magashule, Tshepiso.
The Vrede dairy project was established in 2012 by the Free State provincial government ostensibly to empower black farmers. However, the project was used by Gupta-linked third parties at the expense of the local community who were promised they would benefit.
The third parties, who took on projects on behalf of the provincial department, were awarded large contracts by the provincial government during Magashule’s tenure as premier. This resulted in up to R340m being siphoned out of the empowerment programme and into the bank accounts of Gupta-owned companies and associates.
Some of it was used to finance a lavish wedding for the Gupta brother’s niece at the Sun City resort in the North West in 2013.
Testifying before the parliamentary committee into Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office, Ndou said correspondence with Magashule on the dairy project was excluded from the final report.
Ndou joins a number of witnesses who appeared before the committee who allege Mkhwebane wanted to water down the Vrede report. Others claimed in testimony that she ordered any mention of Magashule and former agriculture MEC Mosebenzi Zwane be excluded.
He said Mkhwebane told him she “would be happy if there were no adverse findings” in the final report.
Ndou said he and others raised the #GuptaLeaks emails with Mkhwebane. He considered relevant “various allegations pertaining to monies from this project” such as a claim that “R84m was siphoned off to a Gupta offshore account” for the Sun City wedding.
“I specifically raised these emails in correspondence with the public protector,” said Ndou.
In an email to her about a draft version of the report, he warned the office had adopted a “dismissive” approach to the #GuptaLeaks, which was a concern.
Although the leaked emails were not part of the “scope of the investigation”, Ndou said excluding them was wrong, particularly in light of a court ruling about a different probe.
“The Supreme Court of Appeal has already indicated that the [public protector] had to follow wherever the investigation leads us. We could not be confined to the complaint,” he wrote.
Ndou said Mkhwebane sent him an SMS on January 5 2018 asking about the report’s progress and saying she wanted to sign it the next day.
Two days later, while Mkhwebane was abroad, he sent her a revised draft report. On returning to SA, she called a meeting on February 8 and wanted Ndou to attend but he was on approved leave.
Mkhwebane sent him an SMS indicating his absence “would make our working together in future difficult”. She insisted he return to the office the same day, which he did not do.
Mkhwebane’s lawyer, Dali Mpofu, said of his taking the two days of approved leave: “You abandoned the public protector, effectively, in her hour of need. You went Awol, you disappeared.”
Ndou disagreed: “I had applied for leave that was approved, with very good reason.”
The committee next meets on Monday.
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