By Valencia Talane The first sign of work done on the ground by the chief procurement officer (CPO) was an announcement by President Jacob Zuma in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) of the centralised procurement by the office of furniture for Eastern Cape schools. “We have begun piloting this new approach with the Read more >
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By Lee-Ann Alfreds Schabir Shaik and Tony Yengeni are well known to South Africans. Fana Hlongwane and Johnny Kamerman are not. But now their names have entered the public domain. Hlongwane and Kamerman have been subpoenaed to answer questions about their roles in South Africa’s controversial 1999 arms deal – synonymous with bribes, dodgy and Read more >
Bra Tjotjo makes his 2014 debut with a humorous take on the misuse of power and public money in a certain major building project – which took a back seat to the general election in recent weeks, but is still an issue that has not yet been resolved. The arch-schemer never misses an opportunity to Read more >
Source: Transparency International South Africa is in the throes of the most hotly contested election in its short history of democracy. A mere 20 years into its widely applauded transition from apartheid, pervasive corruption is a central campaigning issue. This is magnified by the burgeoning scandal surrounding the incumbent president and the ruling party’s presidential Read more >
By Lee-Ann Alfreds They have formed a procession of grey men, with Afrikaans surnames and titles such as programme manager, acquisitions manager and chief financial officer. But while Robert Vermeulen, Johan Odendal, Jacobus Grobler, David Griesel and Henderich de Waal Esterhuyse have not necessarily provided headline-grabbing testimony, they have been important witnesses for the Arms Read more >
By Lee-Ann Alfreds Just 750m apart, two different legal proceedings are underway in the heart of Pretoria. Both are intriguing, will influence the way South Africa is viewed around the world, and have had – to a greater and lesser extent – an impact on the lives of South Africans. But that is where the Read more >
By Lee-Ann Alfreds The figures bandied about are staggering. R30-billion. R71-billion. R90-billion. But what is even more staggering is the fact that no one truly knows what the arms deal has cost South Africa. When the South African government announced the controversial deal in 1999, it stated that the purchase of helicopters, submarines, frigates and Read more >
So far we’ve looked at the structure of municipalities, the laws that govern their management, the way they should handle finances, and the people who manage these tasks. In the last article in our series, we explain how procurement should work in a municipality. Municipalities spend their revenue on a wide range of expenses such Read more >
Whistleblower Richard Young was unable to cross-examine Armscor programme manager Frits Nortje because he does not have sufficient time and access to classified documents – this is one of the big concerns around the Seriti Commission, which is investigating “allegations of fraud, corruption, impropriety or irregularity in the strategic defence procurement package”. Lawyers for Human Read more >