The Democratic Alliance (DA) will this week refer all work performed by the controversial Housing Development Agency (HDA) during the Covid-19 pandemic to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) for investigation and will write to the Chairperson of the Housing Portfolio Committee requesting that a full Parliamentary inquiry is initiated without delay.
Following a report of the Auditor-General, a raid of the HDA’s premises by the Hawks in December, and a number of tender-related Promotion of Access to Information Requests submitted by the DA in January this year, Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has been forced into a corner and has finally, under the belated guise of “accountability”, fired the CFO Brian Mosehla and terminated the secondment of the CEO, Mikki Xayiya. It has been a long time coming.
In May last year Minister Lindiwe Sisulu instructed the HDA’s board to appoint one Brian Mosehla, a multi-millionaire who was also reportedly embroiled in the SASSA grant scandal, as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Entity.
Shortly after instructing Mosehla’s appointment, Sisulu then blocked the HDA board’s recommendation to appoint a suitably vetted candidate to the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO), instead instructing Mikki Xayiya to occupy the post for 6 months. Xayiya and Mosehla are closely tied through the Mvelaphanda Group at which both previously occupied top positions.
Around the same time that these appointments were made, Sisulu announced that her Department was embarking on a multi-million rand emergency de-densification programme. Amongst other budget allocations used to fund this programme was a R377 million re-allocation from the Title Deeds Restoration Grant. The HDA, managed by Mosehla and Xayiya, was then given the lead on the procurement and management of the majority of the programme.
A number of high profile scandals subsequently erupted:
The Temporary Residential Units (TRU’s) built at the Talana Hostels in Limpopo drew the ire of residents when the Premier arrived at the hand-over ceremony to find 40 units resembling tin shacks, built at a cost of more than R64 000 per unit.
In Gauteng, the deadline for 1000 TRU’s in Mamelodi was extended twice, and by November 2020 less than a quarter of units had been completed whilst not a single beneficiary had yet received keys.
At the Dodoma Avenue emergency housing project in KwaZulu-Natal, not a single beneficiary from the Kennedy Road Informal Settlement has yet formally been allocated a unit. In fact, construction has come to a halt due to sub-contracting disputes and units are still awaiting service connections. Poor structural and civil works have meant that the terracing of upper units has now collapsed onto the back doors of units below.
In the Eastern Cape, the G5 Group, trading as NJR Projects, was awarded a tender for the construction of the R173 million Duncan Village emergency housing project. Edwin Sodi, who was arrested in September last year in connection with the R255 million Free State Asbestos tender, was a registered Director of the G5 Group between February and May of 2020. The HDA’s procurement process took place during this time.
This situation is replicated in almost every province where the HDA was appointed as a managing agent. Dodgy tenders, dodgy workmanship, and an on-going litany of failures and excuses.
The Minister’s continuous rotation of acting executives and board-members has now turned the Department of Human Settlements and its entities into fertile ground for rank criminality. Acting officials cannot firmly exercise any authority without risking the axe.
This creates an environment of fear and conformity, in which on-going political interference is not only tolerated but pervasive. Despite on-going assurances, in the 22 months since the Minister assumed office, the situation is yet to remedied.
Make no mistake, this is deliberate.
The situation simply cannot be allowed to continue, and the DA will continue in its fight to prevent service delivery from falling by the wayside while the ANC-government enriches itself at the expense of the people of South Africa.