Image: THAPELO MOREBUDI
Last week’s arrest of businessmen, politicians and senior government officials accused of defrauding the Free State government in the multimillion-rand asbestos project provides a glimmer of hope to South Africans that those implicated in the looting of state funds will eventually have their day in court.
The R255m contract to assess houses with asbestos roofing has been under interrogation at the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture recently.
This is where details of the contract, awarded in 2014 to joint venture Blackhead Consulting and Diamond Hill Trading, were laid bare.
The commission was told the Free State contract was an extension of a Gauteng asbestos audit project.
However, the former head of human settlements in Gauteng said she would not have given the go-ahead had it been disclosed that a joint venture would undertake the work in the Free State.
Diamond Hill was not registered on Gauteng's database.
Furthermore, Blackhead Consulting’s Edwin Sodi admitted his company did not have the skills to remove and dispose of asbestos sheets, which was said to form part of the contract.
Weeks after the revelations at the Zondo commission, law enforcement officers swooped and by the end of last week, the “asbestos seven” lined up in the dock of the Bloemfontein magistrate’s court.
Many South Africans applauded the arrests, with some asking when the big fish would be reeled in.
It remains to be seen how all of this will play out. This is only the first move in what will no doubt be a lengthy legal battle.
Central to the asbestos saga are the thousands of families who continue to live in poor, and potentially dangerous, conditions.
Free State residents have been quoted in various news reports expressing their anger. Not only do they demand that justice be served, but they want their homes fixed.
Many have complained of health conditions they believe are caused by the asbestos roofing.
For years they have simply been ignored.
The tragedy of fraud and corruption in SA does not lie only in the billions that have flowed from the state to line the pockets of individuals, but in the people on the ground who continue to be deprived of the most basic of services, and who continue to be treated as second-class citizens.