D-Account ‘was never probed’
ALMOST a year after former North West premier Thandi Modise (pictured) said her government was probing how hundreds of millions of rand earmarked for community development had “disappeared”, it has emerged there had been no probe.
ALMOST a year after former North West premier Thandi Modise said her government was investigating how hundreds of millions of rand earmarked for community development had “disappeared”, it has emerged there had been no probe.
Ms Modise’s successor, Supra Mahumapelo, says the provincial government has not investigated the “D-Account”, into which royalties from mining companies and other funds for community development were paid.
The collection of North West administration accounts, with 900 beneficiaries, has not been audited since 1994. No record exists of how much was deposited, used or misappropriated.
Last September, when the North West government’s standing committee on public accounts pressed for a detailed report on the more than R300m “missing” from mining royalty payments earmarked for the Rustenburgbased Bapo ba Mogale tribe, Ms Modise said her office had initiated a forensic investigation.
The standing committee had also questioned why Ms Modise intended spending R60m on an investigation when Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, already probing the Bapo ba Mogale complaint, could conduct it without additional costs to the state.
Attempts to get comment last week from Ms Modise on the investigation of the D-Account were unsuccessful.
Mr Mahumapelo said there was never an investigation of the D-Account and Ms Madonsela “never made any progress”. He said he did not want to judge the previous administration, “I just want to focus on the future”.
According to policy, responsibility for the D-account rests in the premier’s office. But it was delegated to the North West finance department, resulting in “confusion being spread all over”, Mr Mahumapelo said.
In the next three months a cutoff date would be announced on the administration of the DAccount and new systems would be put in place to manage the funds, Mr Mahumapelo said.
“We will then say that going backwards we investigate and audit,” he said. In the process the number of accounts would be established; where they were opened; who opened them; and who withdrew funds and at what intervals, he said.
Last December former North West finance director-general Phineas Tjie told Business Day records were kept of the flow of money from the D-Account, and these should be readily available.
The controversy over the DAccount predates the change of government in 1994. Former Bophuthatswana leader Lucas Mangope had been accused of dipping into the fund to sponsor his government’s events. This heightened tension between the homeland government and the Bafokeng tribe, also based in Rustenburg. Immediately after 1994, the Bafokeng decided to administer their own royalty funds, removed them from the DAccount, established a corporate structure and listed on the JSE.
There were two versions of how the Bafokeng removed their royalties from the D-Account.
Researchers investigating the workings of the trust fund suggested the tribe had discovered that the North West government was using the money to pay public servants’ salaries, and threatened to go public unless they were excluded from the account.
Another version, reiterated by Mr Tjie, was that the Bafokeng’s funds had become too “cumbersome” for the government to manage and the tribe was encouraged to administer its own royalty payments.
Mr Mahumapelo said he was aware that investigations of the DAccount were “going to make some people unhappy. But that is what leadership is about.”