The Democratic Alliance (DA) has called for the Auditor-General to do a forensic audit on the finances of the Namaqualand Development Agency (NAMDA).

This comes after the agency failed for the fourth time to produce audited financial statements to Parliament’s Mineral Resources portfolio committee. No statements have been produced since 2007.

At issue is R10 million transferred to NAMDA by the Alexkor Diamond Trust Fund for development projects in the Northern Cape’s Namakwa district.

The meeting revealed that at least two former board members of NAMDA were affiliated to companies that received loans of R150 000 and R200 000, respectively.

The seriousness of this conflict of interest appeared lost on these former board members, who openly admitted in the meeting that they had received the loans.

The elusive R10m was paid to NAMDA in 2004. The NAMDA trustees who attended the meeting were clearly unprepared. They merely presented members with lawyers’ statements of 29 individuals and entities who still owed the agency money which had been loaned to them.

A quick calculation revealed that these figures only added up to around R2.8m, thus leaving approximately R7m still unaccounted for.

Namakwa is a desperately poor district. This money was meant for projects that would create jobs and improve the living standards of the poor. Bursaries that had provided hope to many poor children’s educational aspirations, for instance, have now dried up.

Despite the serious fraud and corruption that has likely taken place in NAMDA, Alexkor, South Africa’s only state-owned mining enterprise, failed to send a representative to the committee meeting.

Overall, it is unclear that there were ever any formal criteria established for how NAMDA would operate. The DA will push for accountability to be brought to bear on anyone involved in the looting of state funds that could otherwise have made a difference to people’s lives.