On the stand was the entity's head of legal Martha Ngoye, who said it was notable that her department was often consulted only when a sticking point arose with a supplier, and not earlier.

Ngoye said the history of maladministration at Prasa continued into the present, and as a result the rail service was embroiled in more than a 100 litigations.

It was, she said, "being sued on a daily basis".

Ngoye said she was at one point in 2015 fired by Montana for raising a procedural problem in a customer service contract with a company called Prodigy, which was linked to KwaZulu-Natal businessman Ray Moodley.

Moodley was a friend of Montana and former president Jacob Zuma, whose years in office came to be defined by the rent-seeking scandal being probed by the commission.

“We were told that whoever touched Prodigy would have to deal with Mr Montana,” Ngoye said.

She testified that the contract was expiring but Montana wanted it extended and the scope widened. Ngoye said colleagues warned her not to push the issue but she insisted Prasa refrain from amending the contract without securing proper legal advice. 

Montana then issued an internal memorandum in which he expressed his irritation at being opposed and went as far as accusing staff of leaking information about contracts to the board, chaired at the time by Popo Molefe.

Ngoye said she felt the allegation was aimed at her and Fanie Dingiswayo, a colleague dealing with the amendment to the contract.

Montana fired first Dingiswayo and then, after she confronted him about the dismissal, Ngoye.

“The culture at Prasa was that not many people would challenge Mr Montana,” she told the commission.

She took the matter to the board, and it overruled Montana and reinstated both herself and Dingiswayo.

The board also instructed Montana to follow proper processes if he were unhappy with the performance of the pair. Montana then suspended them for three months.

The charges against Ngoye were amended to alleged maladministration during her earlier tenure as CEO of Intersite, a Prasa subsidiary.

By the time the suspensions lapsed, Montana himself had been forced to leave. According to Molefe's earlier testimony before the commission, the board got rid of him in the face of opposition by Zuma himself.

Montana's acting replacement Nathi Khena reinstated Ngoye and Dingiswayo.

By then Public Protector Thuli Madonsela was probing maladministration and irregular expenditure at Prasa and one of the deals she examined was with Siyangena, a company also linked to Moodley.

Again, there were concerns about the manner in which the contract had been extended and its scope broadened.

Siyangena was initially a subcontractor of another company engaged by Prasa to refurbish two stations in Johannesburg. But in terms of the new terms, it would install security equipment at more than 80 stations across the country. 

The deal was worth R2.2 billion. Ngoye said though the contract had been put to tender in a closed bidding process, it was not until the bids were submitted that Prasa asked for a full cost proposal.

Siyangena put its cost at R1.1-billion and proposed a funding model that would involve it putting money into the project.

On the basis of this, it won a contract to refurbish 60 stations, with the number swelling to 80 after the contract was awarded.

“When the whole process started, it was clear that Prasa did not have money to make this happen,” Ngoye said.

The process was irregular, she said, in that this aspect of the tender had not been sought from any of the other bidders.

When Prasa eventually approached the North Gauteng High Court to have the contract set aside, its application revealed that the value had further risen to just under R5 billion.

The matter is still before court.

Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula last month described Prasa as being in a state of total collapse after years of looting of its finances and vowed that his department would extricate it from irregular deals inked in the past.

African News Agency