Minister Dean Macpherson: Press conference on IDT investigation and governance reform

Members of the media,
ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning.

Thank you for joining us here at the Imbizo Media Centre at Parliament in Cape Town for this important media briefing on our ongoing investigation into the Independent Development Trust, or IDT.

When I was appointed as the Minister of Public Works & Infrastructure roughly nine months ago, I pledged that during my term in office, we would work to turn South Africa into a construction site which grows the economy and create jobs.

Because, globally, research has time and time again shown that an increase in infrastructure investment helps to turbocharge economy.

However, I said we will only be able to achieve this higher purpose if we are able to bring an end to the culture of impunity and mismanagement which has plagued the Department of Public Works & Infrastructure and its entities for far too long.

This is why I vowed that we will not hesitate to act decisively where allegations of corruption, maladministration, or poor governance is identified, no matter how senior those involved or how uncomfortable it may be.

The actions we have therefore taken at the IDT have not always been easy or popular and have often come at a cost, but have always been in line with our determination to build transparent, well-run entities.

The IDT, a public entity established in 1990s to serve the people of South Africa by delivering social infrastructure such as schools, police stations, and clinics, has an invaluable role to play in turning South Africa into a construction site.

The entity, which directly reports to the Department of Public Works & Infrastructure, is therefore too important for the status quo to continue and the slew of serious allegations to go unanswered.

And while some may have sought to delay and derail efforts to bring accountability, I want to be clear: they will not win.

Ladies and gentlemen,

On the day of my appointment as Public Works & Infrastructure Minister in Cape Town on 3 July last year, I was asked by a member of the media how I plan to address the serious allegations faced by the IDT.

Because, by that time, the IDT had already built up a reputation, facing a number of serious, and well documented claims of alleged mismanagement and corruption

By this time, I was acutely aware of the challenges faced by former Public Works & Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille to clean up the agency.

Minister De Lille, who attempted to address the numerous litigation claims, project cost escalation, time delays and claims of poor performance at the IDT, was ultimately unable to see through her reforms.

But, she was right to be concerned and was on the right track.

I am committed to building on the work Minister De Lille had done with regards to the IDT, having had numerous conversations with her since I was appointed, and I am committed to seeing through lasting change at the agency.

Because, for too many years, it appears that the IDT has gotten away with alleged wrongdoing, while being protected by those with special interests.

I could simply not allow it to continue, and was ready for the fight that lay ahead.

But, I was also acutely aware of the challenges I would face as we sought to stabilise and clean up the agency.

By the time I entered office, the IDT was already on track to miss the deadline to submit its annual reports to Parliament.

It was also clear that the annual reports would likely paint an unacceptable culture of weak internal financial controls, problematic tender processes and insufficient audit oversight.

This followed a string of successive qualified audits that the IDT received from the Auditor General of South Africa.

Its clear that a governance and operational problem has existed for a long time on this fact alone.

I was also routinely made aware of cash flow issues encountered at the IDT, with previous administrations having had to routinely bail out the agency in order to pay basic salaries.

When I met with the board on 13 November 2024 - despite them and some politicians in parliament claiming that I had never met with them - during the quarterly performance review, I emphasised my concerns and reiterated that serious action would have to be taken to remedy the situation.

At the time, the IDT board had become inquorate but still didn’t provide me with names to fill the vacancies despite being required by the IDT’s Trust Deed to submit the names to the Executive Authority when the first vacancies arose dating back in 2023.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As we are all now aware, in October last year, the Daily Maverick published the first in a series of articles with substantial evidence, surrounding the now-infamous R836 million Oxygen plant tender.

These articles raised troubling allegations surrounding the IDT’s role as an implementing agent in a multi-million-rand contract on behalf of the Department of Health for the roll-out of pressure swing adsorption, or PSA, oxygen plants.

This contract was meant to install oxygen infrastructure at 55 public health facilities across the country, ensuring that our hospitals were equipped to deliver essential care to citizens.

Two private contractors were appointed by the IDT through what was described as a competitive process to carry out this project.

However, as reporting began to emerge last year, including detailed investigations by Daily Maverick and Amabhungane, it became clear that something was fundamentally wrong.

On 28 October 2024, Daily Maverick revealed that two of the companies awarded the tender allegedly lacked the necessary South African Health Products Regulatory Authority registration.

This was not a small oversight—it raised red flags about the basic compliance of companies entrusted with delivering life-saving health infrastructure.

The very next day, on 29 October 2024, I wrote to the IDT board requesting a full account of the allegations.

On 1 November 2024, I received an executive summary that lacked substance—no supporting documents, no signed contracts, no evidence of proper procurement procedures.

On 5 November 2024, I wrote again, this time asking for very specific documentation, including minutes of the Bid Evaluation and Bid Adjudication Committees.

On 8 November 2024, the IDT sent a second response, but still failed to provide critical documents I had requested.

In its responses, the Board also indicated that the procurement processes were regular and in compliance with prescripts.

This suggests a hasty acceptance of the IDT management’s view and a failure to properly and transparently deal with the prima facie and uncontested evidence of tender irregularities riddling the tender and its processes.

By this point, a pattern was becoming evident that suggests to me a calculated refusal to cooperate, or at least a serious disregard for oversight, and an alarming lack of transparency from the leadership of an institution meant to be building public trust and which directly reports to my department.

On 11 November 2024, a second article alleged that a ghost company—possibly with fraudulent documentation—had been awarded a R428 million share of the PSA Oxygen Plant tender.

I immediately briefed the President on 15 November 2024 because of the implications it had with regards to donor funding for projects like this, and on 18 November 2024, the Department of Public Works & Infrastructure formally handed over all available documents to the Department of Health.

On 19 November 2024, I again wrote to the IDT board, urging the immediate suspension of the PSA Oxygen Plant tender in light of serious concerns surrounding the procurement process.

On 5 December 2024, the IDT informed me that the Department of Health had communicated its decision to withdraw the contract from the IDT entirely, and that it would launch an investigation into the circumstances that led to the tenders being awarded.

In this regard, I would like to thank the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, for his collaboration and support throughout the process.

On 9 December 2024, I was taken by surprise by a media statement issued on behalf of the Board which now indicated concern with the tender process and purported to support an investigation.

This contradicted their stance with regards to the letters issued to myself in November which indicated their support of the IDT management’s view that the tender processes were above board.

The same media statement points out that the IDT is being investigated by the Hawks as a result of precisely the same prima facie allegations that they did not address when they hastily accepted the IDT management’s response.

Therefore any assertation that it is just myself that was concerned with this tender is entirely false and has been lost on many commentators.

On 10 December 2024, I announced that I would be launching an independent investigation into the IDT and the circumstances surrounding the Oxygen Plant tender as I believed the agency is not able to investigate itself.

Little did I know that this would be the start of a coordinated fightback against myself and the Department of Public Works & Infrastructure in an attempt to shield the IDT of accountability.

But, we simply cannot allow close to a billion rand in donor funds to be misappropriated through alleged corrupt activities, particularly when it involves essential healthcare equipment intended to save lives.  

Ladies and gentlemen,

At the time, it was clear to me that the IDT was in no position to conduct an internal investigation into itself.

This was an obvious point, but which has still been contested up until a meeting on the 19th of February 2025 where the board continued to question how and why the department was investigating the matter through PWC.

The board had only seven of its twelve required members and it was increasingly apparent that the entity lacked the will and the capacity to get to the truth.

It was also clear that the circumstances require the investigator to be independent of the IDT.

I therefore exercised my responsibility as the Executive Authority and ensured that my Department appointed an independent investigator, PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PwC, to conduct the investigation into the PSA Oxygen Plant Project—an investigation that is still ongoing.

Officials and politicians knew they were in trouble, and started rolling out a coordinated fightback campaign.

That December, the Star newspaper started publishing a series of articles undermining my reputation and painting the investigation into the IDT as seeking party interests and as an act of racism.

In a coordinated similar to the Bell-Pottinger Campaign to protect state capture, newly formed or obscure non-profit organisations wrote to the President of South Africa, requesting that the investigations be blocked, and accusing me of using ‘Apartheid-style’ tactics.

At the same time, a steady social media campaign started to emerge, accusing me of racism because of the investigation into the IDT from a series of bot accounts.

Again, in early January 2025, on a late Sunday evening, I sent my spokesperson questions from the Star surrounding an email I sent to an IDT employee, Linet Barnes, surrounding a 20-month delayed payment to a contractor for the Waterkloof Air Force Base.

Despite having less than an hour to respond, and the Star indicating that it will go ahead to publish the Monday morning, I provided the Star with the email thread which clearly shows that I was made aware of the delayed payment and therefore requested a report on the matter.

But, the Star neglected to include my substantive responses because in my view it didn’t suit their narrative.

In fact, I provided the email in question to the Star to show that it was a bogus story, but they refused to publish it.

The Star’s front-page reporting didn’t seem to have made any impact the week it was published.

But, a week later, the Star sent questions surrounding a supposed call log between Daily Maverick investigative journalist Pieter Louis Myburgh and myself alleging I facilitated payments to him to publish articles against the IDT in the Daily Maverick.

Not only did these call logs make use of my incorrect cell phone number, but they were easily identified as being falsified, which could easily have been made on a Word document by a teenager.

Again, despite sending detailed responses, the Star newspaper failed to include substantive replies in its reporting and published false information.

It is telling that they have never chosen to publish these call logs because they are so unbelievably amateurish.

It was the next day when a media storm would emerge in the most vicious of ways and not seen since the days of state capture.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2025, JJ Tabane published an opinion piece on TimesLIVE where he alleged that I had bribed a journalist to attack the IDT and had interfered in its operations.

He accused me of hiring cronies at the Construction Industry Development Board, or CIDB, despite the board being appointed before my term, and having not met the board of the IDT despite having met them in November the year before.

Political parties such as ActionSA and the EFF quickly jumped onto the fightback campaign and became political extensions of this fightback in an effort to give it credibility.

The next day, the EFF opened a criminal case against me at the Pretoria Central Police Station, showing printed copies of the very same email thread I provided the Star newspaper.

They could only have got that thread from the Star because it was myself who gave it to them.

It should also be noted that the police have never contacted me or interviewed because even they could see that there is no case to answer.

ActionSA being the handbag carriers for disinformation that they are, called for my suspension, and wrote to the Public Protector to request a formal investigation.

Again, I have never had a single question asked of me by the Public Protector because there is nothing to answer.

On social media, a series of AI-generated voice notes started to emerge, purporting to show how I use derogatory terms to describe Department of Public Works & Infrastructure employees and the President.

Despite these AI voice notes having been discredited, and TimesLIVE itself issuing a public apology for placing the JJ Tabane piece due to “insufficient evidence of the allegations upon which highly critical opinions were made”, both ActionSA and the EFF is yet to apologise.

They also haven’t acknowledged their involvement in a disinformation campaign to protect individuals and an entity mired in allegations of corruption.

But by this time, the damage had already been done, and officials felt emboldened to fight back against the work we are doing to clean up the department and the IDT.

One must ask oneself, why was it necessary to go to these lengths to block the investigation which was underway and who stood to benefit?

What was there to hide by creating fake call logs, AI voice notes, and driving a social media campaign to try and discredit the investigation and myself?

On who’s behalf do they work for and why?

Is money being dispensed to opinion makers and political parties to partake in this attack?

As former Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said at the height of state capture, it was the public which had to ‘connect the dots’.

And I have no doubt that as the PwC investigation continues, and the results are publicly released, it will be senior politicians who will be exposed.

Let me be clear: I will not be deterred by smear campaigns or political pressure or even threats against my life.

My mandate is to clean up the Department, and that is exactly what I intend to do, relentlessly.

And despite the noise and the intimidation we have experienced, we remain determined to reach our goals.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I can now reveal that I received feedback from the Department and PwC that, in February this year, at an introductory meeting between PwC investigators and the board of the IDT, various IDT officials, IDT management and many of the trustees who were appointed prior to my tenure made unjustified demands as prerequisites to cooperating with the investigation.

These included that the Department must obtain prior approval from the Department of Health, and that the Department provide the IDT with the investigation’s full Terms of Reference.

They stated the view that the Department had no legal right to arrange for the investigation by PwC, demonstrating a shocking disregard for accountability.

This is documented in minutes of the meeting that I have obtained.

In a briefing with the PwC investigators on Friday, they informed me that, as a result of the delay caused by these demands, they had only received documentation from the IDT a day or two earlier and that the information that they had requested was incomplete.

If there is nothing to hide, why not comply with an investigation which will help to reveal the truth?

I am further advised that the investigation is only 25% despite starting in January 2025.

It should have been completed by now had it not been for these delays.

However, I do believe that the final report will be available to myself as the Minister by the end of May 2025 whereby I will make it available to the President, public and Cabinet.

This past week, following a formal application to the Master of the High Court, five new trustees have now been appointed to the IDT, ensuring that there are no vacancies for the first time in more than 18 months.

The board now has the legal standing and institutional strength to fulfil its governance obligations and provide the required oversight.

An application has now been launched against me in the Gauteng High Court by two entities where they seek to suspend and then set aside the appointments of the five members who filled the vacancies on the IDT’s board.

This despite how urgently these appointments are needed in the circumstances.

The application is based on meritless grounds.

I will be responding to them formally in due course in those proceedings.

The same entities have taken to social media to spread the same meritless accusations and to litigate them in public.
However, I want to emphasize that in my view it is not a coincidence that the litigation comes in the context of the fightback that I have set out.

The board will be meeting tomorrow to elect a chairperson, and I urge them to ensure full compliance by all members and executives with the PwC investigation.

I wish the board members well as they assist the board in embarking on the critical task of cleaning up the agency and restoring the IDT to its rightful position in delivering social infrastructure.

And, I look forward to the swift conclusion of the PwC independent investigation to ensure accountability, including potential criminal prosecution, where necessary.

Today, I would also like to announce that I will be recommending that the board authorise lifestyle audits across the senior personnel of the IDT.

Furthermore, I can also reveal that the department is on track to ensure that the interview and selection process for the next board whose term begins on 5 July 2025 will be completed on time to allow for a seamless and smooth transition.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Furthermore, I am deeply concerned about the fresh revelations of allegations of tender rigging to favour companies as revealed by AmaBhungane this past week.

The reports show possible bid rigging in a R436-million set of KZN road rehabilitation tenders, with key documentation possibly ignored.

As I have detailed above, we have faced an active fightback as we worked to clean up the IDT and restore good governance at the agency.

It has not been easy, especially being accused of corruption and being subjected to very serious character accusations.

But, despite the difficulties, I remain resolute in my commitment to the South African people and to building a better South Africa.

We will not be intimidated, and we will not be distracted.

I urge South Africans to keep this in mind as events play themselves out in the weeks and months ahead.

Remember that there are vested interests which are against our attempts to stop corruption and save public money.

But I don’t serve them, I serve you, the people of South Africa.

The fightback would not be as coordinated and sophisticated if the individuals involved did not have a lot to lose.

I have no doubt that there are senior politicians and officials who know they have a lot to lose.

Despite the political noise, despite the fightback, despite the manufactured outrage—I am proud to say today that progress is being made.

We now have a fully appointed board capable of performing all its functions.

We have a credible, independent investigation underway.

We have a Department determined to root out corruption and a public that deserves nothing less.

I want to thank all the public officials, investigators, and stakeholders who have worked tirelessly to uncover the truth. 
We are serious about the information you bring forward and we will act on it.

I also wish the new members of the IDT board well as they assist the board in attending to the urgent matters facing the IDT.

Let me end with this: we are building a better South Africa—not just in bricks and mortar, but in ethics, in governance, and trust.

And that starts with ensuring that those who betray the public interest are held fully accountable.

Thank you.

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