Top education brass plead poverty at bail hearing
Five face R59m fraud and corruption charges over textbooks purchases
A group of current and former Eastern Cape education department senior administration bosses pleaded poverty on Monday while trying to persuade the East London regional court to reduce their proposed R10,000 bail, saying they were too poor and could only afford R2,000 for their freedom.
Through their attorneys, four accused pleaded with magistrate Twinet Olivier to give them a lesser bail, with two telling the court they were no longer employed, had big families to support, and would not be able to cough up the R10,000 bail proposed by the state.
Senior state prosecutor advocate Wayne Jaftha had proposed that all five accused in the R59m fraud and corruption case, be released on R10,000 bail.
However, after their legal teams had persuaded Olivier to reduce the amount, four were released on R5,000 bail each.
The suspects include former administration boss Mthunywa Ngonzo, who was the department’s superintended-general (SG) at the time, current deputy director-general and former acting SG, Ray Tywakadi, former chief education specialist manager Noxolo Gwarube, IT deputy director Tyrone Graig Fourie, and businessman Johannes Bouwer Smith, who was charged along with his company, Siegesmund Trust.
It was only Smith who told that court that he could afford the proposed R10,000 bail.
The five were arrested by the Hawks on Monday morning for allegedly defrauding the department of more than R59m meant for purchasing school textbooks.
They were charged with 15 counts of fraud, corruption, attempted fraud, theft and contravention of the Public Finance Management Act.
This after more than R59m of a R204m textbook tender awarded to 33 publishers in 2014, was not used for its intended purpose, and instead was diverted to procure other items without the provincial treasury’s blessings.
It was Gwarube’s attorney who first protested against the “exorbitant” bail amount.
Gwarube told court that she had been unemployed since 2015, had no steady income, and that with three children and a grandchild to support, paying R2,000 bail, would be a struggle.
Ngonzo’s legal representative said his client was not a flight risk, a pensioner, had kids at tertiary level, and that a R2,000 bail would be reasonable.
Tywakadi said he too could only afford R2,000, while Fourie’s legal team said he too could only afford R2,000 bail.
While Jaftha protested that their proposed amounts were too little, Olivier ruled that bail be fixed at R5,000 each for the four and at R10,000 for Smith, saying such amounts were reasonable for the state and affordable to all the accused.
NPA spokesperson Anelisa Ngcakani on Monday said it was the state’s case that the R59m, instead of buying textbooks, was used to purchase other items such as laptops, computers and photocopiers, with these disguised as textbook purchases.
Gwarube, according to Ngcakani, had allegedly also pocketed an “exhibition fee” of more than R120,000.
The state alleges that in 2014, 33 publishers were invited by the department’s learner teacher support material unit (LTSM) to showcase their products, with the participants paying an exhibition fee to a local conference centre.
At the time, the department also intended assisting schools by procuring supplementary resource material (SRM), which included IT material, photocopiers and other items, while the LTSM unit had budgeted the R204m only for buying textbooks.
The department had not budgeted for the purchase of any SRM in that financial year, but despite that, it allegedly continued with the procurement of SRM.
Their alleged actions, according to Hawks spokesperson Captain Yolisa Mgolodela, were unknown to the department and provincial treasury.
It is the state’s case that Gwarube’s unit “misrepresented facts” to the department that textbooks would be procured by submitting expenditure approval requests where it was indicated that R204m had been approved for the procurement of the textbooks, while the SRM in the application “was misrepresented as textbooks”.
It is alleged that one of them, “further submitted misleading documents”, indicating that only textbooks were to be procured, while knowing that the R59m SRM had been added to that amount.