There is a peculiar mixture of relief and annoyance following the Special Investigating Unit’s announcement this week that it has recovered R25 million from a group of businesses connected to the Chachulani Group. relief that the money is finally returning. frustration because many South Africans are now practically familiar with the story behind it. a pandemic. schools that are locked down. a hurry to reopen. And decisions were made on WhatsApp during that rush.
The settlement stems from a 2022 Special Tribunal decision that invalidated R431 million in contracts that the Gauteng Department of Education had awarded for sanitizing, disinfecting, and decontaminating schools in 2020. R25 million of the R40 million that the GDE paid to organizations associated with Chachulani Group Investment Holdings is currently being recouped. The method they used is anything but clinical, even though the numbers themselves are.
The dysfunction described by the SIU is almost casual. Referrals, pre-existing databases, and WhatsApp messages were used to find service providers instead of the Supply Chain Management department, which was responsible for screening them. Reading the results gives the impression that no one really stopped to consider whether this was the proper way to manage a procurement program worth R400 million. Later on, the senior officials involved openly acknowledged that the recommended procedures had not been followed. You can learn a lot about the time period just from that admission.
And there’s the cost. According to the SIU, providers were not compensated on a square meter basis, which is how cleaning work is typically valued. Rather, flat fees of R250,000 to R270,000 for primary schools, up to R290,000 for high schools, and up to R300,000 for district offices seem to have been agreed upon by a senior GDE official. The investigation provides a clear answer to the question of whether those figures represented any actual measure of effort or material cost: they didn’t. The SIU claims that the fees were out of proportion to the amount of work completed.
This script has become so familiar that it’s difficult to ignore it. In South Africa, tender irregularities during a state of disaster have given rise to a distinct genre of news reports that frequently use the same terms, such as deviation, preservation order, settlement, and withdrawal of appeal. The Chachulani case is unique primarily in the extent of the recovery and the specificity of the amounts that are currently being deducted from particular accounts. R1.7 million there, R707,892 here. R12.9 million from the Naledzi Investment Trust’s two offshore unit trusts. R8 million from a different Naledzi account. Every line item reads like a paragraph in a longer narrative.
The SIU claims that the companies have agreed to withdraw their appeal before the Johannesburg High Court and have consented to the deductions. After the Tribunal issues its order, the money must be transferred to the SIU within seven days. Procedural, quiet, and nearly anticlimactic. For this specific chapter, there won’t be a televised hearing or a perp walk. Just a closed file and bank transfers.
It’s unclear at this time whether the criminal aspect of the situation progresses. The SIU has acknowledged that, in accordance with the 1996 Act that governs its operations, it refers evidence of criminal activity to the National Prosecuting Authority; however, referrals and prosecutions are two different things, and South Africans have learned to wait. Five years have passed since President Cyril Ramaphosa issued Proclamation R23 of 2020, which authorized this entire line of inquiry. The related cases are still making their way through courts, tribunals, and settlement tables.
A more subdued point is worth clinging to. The documents hardly mention the schools at the center of it all, the district offices, high schools, and primary schools that were supposed to be cleaned up. In 2020, actual kids returned to those buildings. Classroom doors were reopened by actual teachers. The documentation can’t really tell you what the cleaning was like or if it was worth anything near R300,000 per site. It matters that the recovered R25 million will return to the public. However, it won’t respond to that query.
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