Despite not owning a single water tanker, two companies linked to ANC Tshwane heavyweights Eugene “Bonzo” Modise and Rhulani James Shelenge scored R31.7m for water trucking services during the city’s R777m emergency water supply project.
An investigation has found that in financial 2025, the Tshwane metro paid Best Enough Trading & Projects 669 — a company owned by Shelenge his wife, Ntombifuthi Valeria Shelenge — R30m to truck water.
Shelenge, also a pastor, was elected treasurer of the ANC in the Tshwane region in December. Little is publicly known about Shelenge’s previous political career, but in ANC regional politics such senior positions are typically occupied by individuals with long‑standing, active involvement in local branch politics.
The metro also paid Gofa-One — a company of which Modise had previously been a director — R1.7m for trucking water in financial 2024.
Modise, the ANC chair in the Tshwane region, is Tshwane deputy mayor and also MMC for finance, a position that gives him significant influence over the metro’s spending decisions.
Although Modise stepped down as a director of Gofa-One shortly before he became a councillor in Tshwane in March 2023, the entity’s registered address is still his family home in Mabopane, northwest of Pretoria. Modise, together with his late mother Nelly Modise, founded the company in 2010.
The investigation discovered that neither Best Enough nor Gofa‑One owns water tankers, raising questions about how they were able to secure the lucrative contracts.
Information obtained from the electronic National Traffic Information System shows that the only vehicle registered to Gofa-One is an earthmoving machine, a backhoe front loader.
Invoices show that officials paid Gofa-One a total of R819,000 in four tranches in July 2023, the first month of the metro’s 2024 financial year.
By the end of November, the company had been paid more than R1.7m as the city resorted to intensive use of water tankers due to infrastructure problems.
The invoices ranged between R76,500 and R451,000.
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