DA FINDS SENIOR TSHWANE POLITICIANS SEEMINGLY IMPLICATED IN TENDER AND FRAUD WEB

Cllr Jacqui Uys DA Tshwane Caucus Chief Whip briefing media on Tuesday joined by DA Tshwane candidate Cilliers Brink and Temba Fosi photo by Dimakatso Modipa

By Cllr Jacqui Uys
DA Tshwane Caucus Chief Whip

The following notes were delivered by Jacqui Uys, DA Tshwane Caucus Chief Whip during a press briefing on Tuesday.

During the testimony of Sergeant Fannie Nkosi at the Madlanga Commission, mention was made of a company called Elshadai Security Services.

This company had ostensibly received preferential treatment in the preparation of a security tender by the Tshwane Metro.

Electronic evidence was also led showing potential interference by ActionSA and the EFF in the same tender.

When we searched the name of Elshadai on CIPC records, it was discovered that it shares a common registered address with several other companies, that have from time to time, done business with Tshwane.

That common address is 148 Visvanger Street, Haakdoornboom.

During the DA’s time in government, we raised concerns about tender awards to some of these companies.

During the course of 2024, we were approached by sources who claimed that companies sharing this address worked in common purpose to ensure joint control over waste collection tenders.

This would be in contravention of tender requirements and regulations.

The Auditor-General subsequently also raised concerns during the 2023/24 financial audit about a tender award called SS01 2023/24 for the supply of both waste collection and water tanker services.

Again, some of these companies were registered at the address 148 Visvanger Street.

We raised these concerns with the Tshwane CFO Gareth Mnisi, who assured us that the concerns of the AG would be addressed.

This was about two weeks before the DA and our coalition partners were removed from government.

The DA made an exploratory visit to 148 Visvanger Street, and searched the other companies that had been beneficiaries of SS01 2023/24.

Two important discoveries were made:

At 148 Visvanger, a collection of water tankers, waste removal trucks, and yellow plant was observed, which tended to confirm that this address was being used by multiple companies performing services related to those of the SS01 2023/24 tender.

On a company search, we found that most of the companies that had benefitted from SS01 2024/24 had one of four individuals as current or past directors, namely Percy Lamola, Abednego Lamola, Alvin Naicker, and Donavan Naicker.

One of these companies was called Aqua Transport.

The importance of Aqua Transport is that another ANC politician in Tshwane, George Matjila, had approached the DA when in government on at least two occasions enquiring about the payment of invoices by Tshwane to this company.

We presumed that Matjila, who is not a councillor of the City, had some connection with Aqua Transport as a subcontractor.

We did enquiries on the payment of these and other invoices that Matjila brought to our attention from time to time, but discovered that many of them were backdated to as far back as 2018 and were not backed by purchase orders.

In other words, we suspected that what Matjila wanted was for Tshwane to pay invoices that had not in fact been properly requisitioned by the City. This creates the risk of fraud.

Later, at the end of 2025 when the DA was no longer in government, a report served before the section 79 Oversight Committee on Finance indicating that the companies that Matjila enquired about, including Aqua Transport, had debit balances on their supplier accounts of R6,8 million.

This indicated that payments were eventually made by the City to the companies, seemingly, without invoices being processed, another fraud red flag.

Turning back to Elshadai Security Services registered at the common address of 148 Visvanger, we’ve discovered that one of the founding directors of Elshadai, a person called MM Masilela, had been a founding director with a top-ranking ANC politician companies called On the Dot Media and African Monitoring Group.

That ANC politician is Eugene Modise, the current deputy mayor of Tshwane and MMC for Finance.

The DA will provide more of the details of the above to the Madlanga Commission, who might be in a position to draw links between the information we have and evidence which had been led, and will still be led, at the Commission.