The Democratic Alliance wants the Commissioner of the South African Revenue Services (Sars) Tom Moyane to run a lifestyle audit on Minister of Mineral Resources Mosebenzi Zwane.
This comes after The Sunday Times reported that while Zwane was the MEC for Human Settlements in the Free State, he authorised payments to companies that did not do any work.
"The DA will write to the Commissioner of Sars, Tom Moyane, to request that Sars conduct a lifestyle audit on the Minister of Mineral Resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, to establish the extent of his personal benefit from unauthorised payments to contracts in the Free State housing scandal. It is astonishing that Minister Zwane used his previous role as MEC of Housing in the Free State to sanction multi-million rand payments to contractors who either didn't do any work or didn't finish the projects they were contracted to do," said the DA shadow minister for Human Settlements Solly Malatsi.
The contracts also fingered the SABC's Hlaudi Motsoeneng and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula's wife Nozuko, who are trustees of two trusts that allegedly received millions from the provincial department. The new MEC for Human Settlement Sisi Ntombela's department is going after those who benefitted and suing the 106 contractors in a bid to recover more than R600 million.
Malatsi said the attempts made to hide the scandal were an indication that Zwane could have benefitted.
"The fact that Minister Zwane violated his previous department's supply chain and procurement processes, and fabricated a plan to deceive the National Ministry of Housing on its spending trends, shows that Minister Zwane went to great lengths to ensure that millions of state funds were channeled to contractors. In light of this, there is every reasonable suspicion to conclude that Mr Zwane may have personally benefitted, directly or indirectly, from these unlawful payments — a lifestyle audit by SARS is the best means to establish if this is indeed the case," said Malatsi.
This article erroneously had a headline referring to Minister Zwane as "housing minister". This has been corrected.