Legal eagle, Advocate Paul Pretorius was persistent in calling Zwane to account, why he presented an expired list of 106 bidders to the provincial executive committee (EXCO) for approval at the end of June 2010, when an open tender process had closed two months prior and the applications were still under consideration.

Zwane went back and forth, justifying his decision by maintaining that a dispute arose over the size of the low-income houses and this affected the EXCO approved list of contractors. The Department was subsequently forced to formulate a new database altogether. This new consolidated list had over 300 qualified and unqualified contractors.

Two hours into his testimony, the former Mineral Resources Minister, still couldn’t explain, why he had presented EXCO with the list of 106 contractors who were on the expired/defunct 2009/2010 database, when an open tender process to establish a 2010/2011 database was well underway. Zwane did eventually concede, that the list he presented to EXCO, may have been illegitimate, but added that he simply didn’t know.

Pretorious says “it seems to me the only explanation is the MEC together with the EXCO had their own plan of who was going to construct houses and on what bases they would be selected. This had no relationship with the open tender process”. Zwane denied that this was the case. It was at this June 2010 Exco meeting that the advance payments were greenlit for the chosen contractors, seeing as the provincial government wanted the houses to be erected urgently. These advance payments, amounted to R 500 million.

His testimony before the commission comes just weeks after the seven people arrested for their involvement in a R 255 million tender for the audit of asbestos housing in the province, were arrested and promptly released out on bail ranging between 50 000 to R 500 000. The former head of the Free State Human Settlements Department Nthimotse Mokhesi;  businessman Sello Radebe; the former Director General (DG) of the National Human Settlements  Department Thabane Zulu; and former Mangaung Metro Mayor Olly Mlamleli were granted R 100 000 bail. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Johannesburg company Blackhead Consulting Edwin Sodi paid R500 000 for bail. Free State Human Settlements official Mahlomola Matlakala and businessman, Kgotso Monyeki were released out on R 50 000 bail down from the R 100 000 proposed by prosecutor Johan De Nysschen.

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