In September 2008, Mr Sibusiso Buthelezi, the head of the Gauteng Public Transport, Roads and Works Department, circulated an email that alleged irregular activities by his MEC Ignatius Jacobs.

Jacobs shot back with his own allegations, which led former premier Mbhazima Shilowa to request the Resolve Group to investigate.

So began a saga that exposed a host of contraventions of financial controls and fishy tender awards that wasted hundreds of millions of rands.

Buthelezi was suspended in July last year, and in November a settlement was reached whereby he left the department with payment of R1 million, and all charges were withdrawn against him.

This was a real cop out, but it was claimed that the disciplinary case would have dragged on and charges could still be laid by law enforcement agencies.

If it wasn't for leaks to the press about the Resolve Group report we would have been entirely in the dark about what it was all about.

Despite repeated requests the report was not made public until Premier Nomvula Mokonyane released it days before the ANC's provincial congress.

It backfired as it looked like a tactic to discredit her rival Paul Mashatile who is Buthelezi's close friend.

Mashatile's re-election as ANC provincial chairperson reflects extremely badly on what really drives the ANC.

For all her faults, Mokonyane has been trying to undo the mismanagement she inherited from Mashatile, especially in the Economic Affairs Department that he used to head.

The Auditor-General identified 99 adverse findings in his latest report on this department.

According to Economic Affairs MEC Firoz Cachalia, R800 million was saved by cancelling the motorsports contracts that were extremely badly drawn up.

The department's various agencies are a sinkhole of bad governance, jobs for pals, conflicts of interest and sweetheart deals.

It's a cosy club for comrades where Blue IQ board members who fouled things up still received R20 000 for each meeting attended.

It's a part of what has been called the "Alex mafia", a network of Mashatile's friends and associates who allegedly benefited irregularly from tenders.

When I mention the Alex mafia in the Gauteng Legislature the ANC hotly denies that this exists.

Yet the Resolve report cites former MEC Ignatius Jacobs as alleging in essence a "criminal conspiracy" in which Buthelezi and his friends enriched themselves through bribes and tenders.

The report found multiple linked directorships in companies that received government contracts, and recommended that this be further examined.

I doubt that this will happen as Buthelezi was politically protected for years through various controversies in departments that he previously headed.

He notoriously overrode tender regulations on the supposed basis of urgency and should have been fired long ago.

The cost of corruption has been estimated at about 20% of government's total procurement bill.

In Gauteng this amounts to the loss of about R4 billion each year that could have been spent on hospitals, schools, roads and the needy.

Cleaning this up was not the priority of those ANC members who voted Mashatile back into power.

It seems to me that the internal ANC culture of self-enriching deployments defeats all efforts to root out corruption.

I am reminded of the cynic's view that "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, stays bought."

Jack Bloom is a Democratic Alliance member of the Gauteng legislature. This article first appeared in The Citizen.

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