Director general in hot spot over R141m claim from home affairs

Shortly before he was suddenly suspended, home affairs director general Mkuseli Apleni was accused of involving his minister in a nasty legal fight without her knowledge — while someone in her office kept up covert communications with a group claiming R141-million from the government.

Less than a week after Apleni angrily denied this accusation, Home Affairs Minister Hlengiwe Mkhize served Apleni with suspension papers and announced the action publicly, without giving reasons for her action.

Although there is no evidence that the suspension is related to the legal battle, the latter points to serious differences between Apleni and those supposedly close to Mkhize.

For the past seven years Apleni has been central to fending off a claim by a former supplier of bandwidth to the home affairs department, Double Ring, for what now amounts to R141-million. Since 2009 that company has launched various legal attempts to claim the money — as well as trying other means.

Double Ring tried “to resolve the matter through political channels, either directly with the thenminister [of home affairs] or at one stage even trying to approach the president of the Republic of South Africa in order to avoid continuing with the litigation”, Apleni wrote in an affidavit earlier this month.

Double Ring has since placed itself into voluntary liquidation, leaving its liquidators to claim the money they insist the department of home affairs still owes.

In early September, Apleni rushed to court to prevent the liquidators from enforcing subpoenas calling him, Mkhize and former home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba to provide evidence at formal liquidation proceedings. He cited Mkhize as the first applicant.

But the liquidators’ “investigator” had established that “the minister is unaware of the urgent application and apparently did not instruct [the department of home affairs] or its attorneys to launch these proceedings”, they said in a replying affidavit.

As proof, the liquidators attached what they said was a transcript of an “electronic communication obtained from a representative” of Mkhize.

The transcript does not identify the sender or recipient. It consists of just two lines: “No she has not given him any authority at all” and “We are dealing with it now but we are looking for the document we think he is hiding it from her.”

The liquidators also accused Apleni of hiding documents crucial to their R141-million claim and said he was “conveniently and without remorse” trying to mislead the court.

Apleni responded angrily in turn, dismissing what he called “scurrilous and defamatory allegations” about himself, and insisting Mkhize’s legal adviser had signed off on his actions. “I am simply doing my duty to protect the fiscus,” Apleni told the court.

He did not deal with the implication that someone in Mkhize’s office was dealing with the liquidators outside of the legal process.