SILENCED | 'I know nothing': How a pool cleaner, unemployed guard were used to 'cook' Tembisa tenders

• Tembisa tender don Hangwani Maumela and a close associate, Vusi Matlala, were favoured suppliers of Tembisa Hospital.
• News24 can today reveal that they used companies to bid against one another, using "stolen" identities which masked their respective stakes. 
• This transaction is among more than a thousand payments flagged by Babita Deokaran before she was murdered. 

Two Limpopo women, one a municipal worker and the other an unemployed security guard, became unwitting bedfellows when their "stolen" identities were used in a scheme to rig a lucrative Tembisa Hospital contract, News24 can reveal.   

Raesibe Motebejano spends her days cleaning the Polokwane Municipality's public swimming pools. The 44-year-old's signature also appears on bid documents for an entity called Black AK Trading and Suppliers, which tendered for a supplier contract from the East Rand Hospital.

That contract, worth almost R500 000, was given to another company, called Magnolia Trading Enterprise, which listed 32-year-old Portia Seleka as its sole director in its bid submission. Seleka is a security guard who, unable to find work, lives with her family in Sekakeng Village on the outskirts of Polokwane.

READ | Camps Bay to Zimbali: Inside Tembisa tender don’s R280m property bonanza

Neither Motebejano nor Seleka know anything about the two companies – both linked to Tembisa tender don Hangwani Morgan Maumela, and his consiglieri, Vusi Matlala, whose companies seemingly used the stolen identities to bid against one another. 

This payment is just one of more than a thousand transactions flagged by Babita Deokaran, who discovered the first signs of a R1-billion extraction syndicate. She was assassinated three weeks after reporting her concerns, murdered when 12 shots were fired at her while she was sitting in her car. 

Details around this contract to supply endoscopic surgical equipment are contained in 900 pages of bid forms, quotations and purchase orders filed in disciplinary action against Gauteng health department boss Lerato Madyo and Tembisa Hospital CEO Ashley Mthunzi. These documents - which underpin allegations of misconduct - have never been seen before. 

Madyo and Mthunzi face dismissal for misconduct related to 13 contracts they approved. When it came to inking this deal for Maumela's firm, forgeries and identity "theft" are among a raft of irregularities overlooked. 

'Fake and forged'

Motebejano and Seleka have never been directors of the two companies, or any other entities. It appears that copies of their ID documents were used to obscure the actual owners of the competing firms, Maumela and Matlala. 

The trove of departmental documents provides new insight into how companies controlled by Maumela and Matlala bid against one another.  

This raises the possibility of "cover quoting", where entities collude to make artificially inflated prices appear competitive. 

Moreover, companies they control seemingly submitted fake and doctored bid documents to make it seem as if they had no links to the firms. This is what we found:

Documents filed in support of this bid list Portia Seleka as Magnolia Trading Enterprise's lone director. A declaration form signed by "director" Khaya Mdlalose directly contradicts this.

An identity number for Mdlalose is invalid, and the CIPC database shows that the controlling hand behind Magnolia is Maumela. 

Neither Seleka nor the mystery Mdlalose have ever been appointed as directors of this company. 

News24 found Seleka in a dusty village, an hour's drive north of Polokwane in Limpopo. 

"I know nothing about this," she said, adding that she could not fathom how a certified copy of her identity document was used to bid for a Tembisa Hospital contract hundreds of kilometres away. 

The copy of her identity document was certified at the Botlokwa police station, close to her home, in 2012. 

"I would never give anyone my ID and I did not get paid to let someone use it. I can only think that when I am applying for jobs, I leave my CV and these copies all over the place, that must be how," Seleka said.  

A similar method of operation was discovered in the losing bid, which comes from a company owned by Matlala.

According to documents submitted in support of a bid by Black AK Trading and Suppliers, the listed director of this entity is Raesibe Motebejano. 

News24 tracked Motebejano to her workplace, the Polokwane Local Municipality, where she is employed as a general worker to clean public pools. 

She denied any knowledge of the company or Matlala and, was insistent that she had never had an interest in the firm, something confirmed by the Companies and Intellectual Property database. 

Her signature on the declaration documents, which shows her surname with a random flourish, was a bad forgery, she said.

An exemplar of her signature, which is on her identity document, is completely different.

Many irons in the fire

When Deokaran first raised her concerns about "possibly fraudulent" payments which caused a surge in Tembisa Hospital spending, she earmarked 217 suppliers which she felt deserved further scrutiny. 

On this list were nine companies controlled by Maumela and another three directed by his cousin, Aluwani. 

READ | 'Don of Tembisa' received millions in payments, bought Bantry Bay and Sandton mansions

A News24 investigation titled Silenced drew links between Hangwani Maumela, nephew to President Cyril Ramaphosa from a previous marriage, and other tenderpreneurs through a web of little-known entities and opaque trusts. 

Four people, through 10 companies, scored R23 million in contracts. One of these people was Matlala. 

Matlala – via three companies in trade with the East Rand hospital – raked in R5 million in just one month and the pair are connected through a once-shared interest in private security outfit called Cat VIP Protection.  

Enter the SIU

In a preliminary report filed in December, the SIU named Maumela as a central actor in syndicate activity within Tembisa Hospital's supply chain management office.  

For the Magnolia Trading Enterprise deal, the graft-busting squad recommended that Maumela be referred to the National Prosecuting Authority, as some bid documents were "false", which raises the spectre of fraudulent activity.

Examining the documents associated with Matlala's company, it seems the same referral could be made. 

Big money 

News24 previously reported that the MHR Maumela Family Trust, of which Maumela, his mother and sister are trustees, amassed a property portfolio worth more than R300 million in just five years.  

This includes palatial homes in Sandton, Camps Bay, Bantry Bay, Hartbeespoort and Zimbali. 

Detailed questions were sent via e-mail to both Maumela and Matlala. Neither responded at the time of publishing.

The disciplinary inquiry which will decide the fate of Madyo and Mthunzi sat for the first time in February. A second sitting, chaired by advocate Phillip Mokoena SC, is set to take place later this year.

 - Additional reporting by Alfonso Nqunjana