Tshwane Capture

The world’s third biggest metro municipality is still on a corruption ride to nowhere.

- Susan Puren

THE DA-CONTROLLED TSHWANE Metro Municipality still forks out millions of rands every month to pay service providers for contracts that are riddled with fraud and corruption.

The current DA administration inherited most of these contracts from the previous ANC dispensation. There is simply no value for money within most of these projects, and the DA’s attempts to cancel them have failed in most instances.

The Corporate Fleet Management contract – a public-private partnership (PPP) with the Moipone Group of Companies – is a prime example. The five-year agreement to replace Tshwane’s old vehicle fleet and maintain the proposed new one was signed in March 2016, five months before the local elections in August of that year. At the time the contract was valued at R950 million but it has since allegedly escalated to R1.3 billion.

The tender specified that thousands of vehicles, including passenger cars, light delivery vans, tractors, trucks, ambulances and motorcycles were to be supplied. One hundred and thirty companies submitted bids but surprise and anger greeted the fact that little-known Moipone won this massive contract. Compared to the big-name bidders, Moipone was shown to have limited experience in fleet management on such a large scale. Some of the bidders took their grievances to court and two other companies were then contracted to fulfil sections of the tender.

The Moipone group’s frontman is its CEO and director Matete Joseph Lebakeng, an entrepreneur who has tried his hand at various business ventures since 1996, over time registering several companies with Cipro, now Cipc.

Moipone Fleet (Pty) Ltd was registered in 2002 but officially changed its name to Moipone Group of Companies in December 2017, almost two years after the fleet contract was signed.