A year has passed since convicted fraudster Schabir Shaik was
controversially released on medical parole - yet during that time, he has
been seen out and about in public a number of times.
Shaik, who has applied for a presidential pardon, has been spotted at some
of his favourite spots including restaurants in Florida Road and golf
courses in Durban.
Shaik, who was a financial adviser to then vice-president Jacob Zuma, was
convicted on two counts of corruption for having a "generally corrupt"
relationship with Zuma, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He was granted parole on medical grounds last March by then correctional
services minister Ngconde Balfour. Of his two years and four months in jail,
Shaik spent most of his time in and out of hospital.
Contacted by The Mercury yesterday, he said he was not allowed to speak to
the media.
Shaik's parole conditions were tightened by correctional services after
pictures of him out shopping were published in the media in December.
A woman who works at a supermarket in Florida Road said Shaik came in every
Sunday.
"He used to shop on Sundays but he stopped after the press followed him
around. But he has started coming again lately and he does not look sick."
Another woman in the shop said Shaik looked well and did not appear to be
sick, "
unless he is taking really good care
of himself" *1.
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This article was originally published in
The
Mercury on March 03, 2010
With acknowledgements to
Nompumelelo Magwaza and
Cape Times.
However well he might be taking care of
himself, if he was terminally ill after a year and more of staying alive he
would look like merde.
This is a case of fraud, pure and simple.
And defeating the ends of justice.
But it is done just so openly, so blatantly, so shamelessly.
Just like the president of the country and the president of the ANCYL.
By the way, so what if Malema resigned as a director of any of the companies
that received R140 million worth of contracts to build bridges that
collapsed or roads that washed away.
It's not the directors who receive dividends, but the shareholders.
Malema is a 70% shareholder of these companies. He is the owner.
It is clear that this is now the modus operandi to get taxpayers' monies out
of their hands into those of the ANC bigwigs.
Simple : register a company or CC, take 70% equity for oneself, allocate 30%
equity to one or two others who are actually going to front for the company
and include their names in the tender documents, tender for all manner of
state contracts at highly inflated prices, win these from one's buddies in
the state who have been deployed there by Shell House especially for this
purpose; take 50% of the income as dividends straight away and then get some
two-bit sub-contractor to build some merde roads, bridges and stormwater
drains at less than half of the tender price.
Just yesterday evening I heard a recent (last couple of days) true story of
show it works. A mining company on the West Coast has called for tenders to
drill a test borehole. An established driller gave a tender on time for R50
000. A black tender entrepreneur arrived 10 minutes late, but still insisted
that his tender be accepted. His tender was for just R170 000. He insists
that his must be the winning tender because his is the only BEE tender. So
he will probably get it. All he does then is pocket R120 000 and pay one of
the losing tenderers R50 000 to do the job.
This is how it is happening every single day out there.
The taxpayer is paying two to ten times as much for just about every job
there is to do in government. Most of the time the quality of what is
completed is so poor it has to be done again. But often the work is not
completed and the contractor gets paid in full willy nilly.
It's fraud, pure and simple.
But it's actually worse than fraud because it's just a matter of time before
one of these bridges or buildings collapses just like they do in the rest of
Africa and the Third World and kill someone.
It's fraud, it's theft, it's culpable homicide, it's murder.
It's Africa.
Merde.