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The Democratic Alliance (DA) will request that the Public Protector adds today’s revelations by this morning's Sunday Times - that the national government terminated a R20 million contract with Roux Shabangu’s company, Roux Property Development Africa, in August last year for failing to complete the construction of a police station in Mpumalanga – to its investigation into the dodgy SAPS property deals.

The termination of the contract in such circumstances raises questions, because the law restricts any company that fails to meet the terms of a government contract from doing repeat business with the state. If the R20 million contract was terminated in such circumstances, why did Mr. Shabangu then get the R500 million property deal contract for moving police headquarters in Pretoria and another massive deal in relation to another building for SAPS in Durban?

By September last year the Special Investigating Unit was probing the major scandal relating to two rental deals, for buildings in Pretoria and Durban, worth over R700 million, and Commissioner Cele attempted to shift the blame to the three generals who resigned. Two of these generals claim that they were effectively ‘fired’ – forced out because they refused point blank to sign off on the Roux Shabangu deals as they were for unnecessary and extremely expensive offices. Commissioner Cele, on the other hand, claimed that he approached the SIU and asked them to investigate. The Ministry of Public Works, however, claimed it, and not Commissioner Cele, asked the SIU to investigate the matter.

The DA understands that the contract for 477 Smith Street in Durban, which has now been cancelled by Public Works, was to be rented to the SAPS by Roux Shabangu for R6 million per month, an amount that could have bought the R42 million building outright within just over half a year. The building is 42 000 sq meters as opposed to the current building’s 12 000 – and when queried about where the personnel were to be sourced to fill such a building, it was allegedly stated that the staff would be taken from the surrounding police stations, although the DA understands that no needs analyses documentation was allegedly forthcoming, despite frequent requests. The proposed removal of, for example, the family violence, child protection, sexual offences and crime intelligence units from Inanda, Phoenix, Durban Central, Brighton Beach, Umlazi, Chatsworth and Pinetown would, we believe, have had a damaging impact on the relevant communities.

In addition, there are still unanswered questions about the Kurator building in Pretoria, leased by Public Works for the SAPS top structure to move in while renovations of their offices were conducted at Wachthuis. The Kurator contract has run for around a year thus far, at R2 million per month, and the building stands empty because the entire process was stalled while Commissioner Cele allegedly entered into another agreement with Roux Shabangu. That contract was for yet another building in Pretoria – a 10-year lease costing R520 million. Commissioner Cele also slammed the fact that the Wachthuis contract had been signed for 10 years by Public Works, although the explanation given was that, for the five years it took to build the new police headquarters, the SAPS would occupy the building, and after that the offices would be utilised by other government entities.

We believe that the revelation of yet another deal by SAPS with Mr. Shabangu – in this case a contract on which he failed to deliver – must be looked into by the Public Protector, as part of ongoing investigations being carried out by Adv. Madonsela's office into Mr. Shabangu's property deals.