- The Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) has agreed to pay more than R1 billion in a fictitious agreement to lease a building for its headquarters.
- Shula Developers does not own the property - and has no access to the Brooklyn Office Park to which it is ostensibly moving the GPAA head office.
- JSE-listed Attacq is the owner of the property and has no dealings with Shula or the pensions administrator.
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The Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA), which administers the pension assets of government employees, has agreed to pay just under R1 billion in what appears to be a fictitious agreement to lease a building for its headquarters in Pretoria for the next 10 years.
The contract is laden with serious irregularities and governance failures, including what could be criminal conduct, fraud and corruption on the part of GPAA’s executives and the winning bidder.
Shula Developers won the tender, even though it neither owns nor has access to the building. It was awarded the tender based on a letter in which it told GPAA that it had made an offer to acquire the Brooklyn Bridge Office Park building.
The GPAA was established in 2010 to provide administration services to the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), which manages about R3 trillion in civil servants’ and other parastatals’ pensions.
Without a board of directors, the GPAA’s chief executive, Kedibone Madiehe, reports to the minister of finance, currently Enoch Godongwana.
News24 can reveal the GPAA bid team awarded the contract to Shula without having gained access to inspect the building to determine its suitability for the contract.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has oversight responsibility for the GPAA
The lease is valid for nine years and 11 months from the occupation date, which is pencilled in for March 2026.
This means that, when the time comes, the GPAA will be liable to start paying rent on a lease to a building to which it has no access.
News24 has also reliably learnt that tens of millions of rand have already been paid to Shula and another entity to ready the building for occupation.
Despite the stated requirement to produce either proof of ownership or a signed and valid deed of sale agreement in a pending transaction when the tender was being adjudicated, Shula did not provide the GPAA with either.
Shula has two directors, Modulathoko Cornelius Kgaka and Lazarus Sikhwetha, who negotiated the deal.
Shula won the contract and beat three other bidders - the Public Investment Corporation, SKG Africa and Talis Property Investments - all of whom provided proof of ownership of the properties they offered for the deal.
Shula declined to answer direct questions about whether it owned the building at the time it submitted its bid or currently.
In a letter sent by law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, Shula cited pending litigation as a reason for not answering our detailed questions, only saying it had complied with the tender requirements when it submitted its bid.
Cliffe Dekker warned News24 against publishing “assumptions and allegations” that are not grounded in facts and to await the outcome of the litigation in which one of the losing bidders approached the court.
When approached for comment on the transaction, the GPAA declined to answer questions about who among its officials had access to inspect the property during the bidding process. It cited “internal processes” that were investigating the transaction.
“If the final report [from the processes] points to irregularities, we will follow due process as per National Treasury guidelines,” said its spokesperson, Mack Lewele.
The Brooklyn Bridge Office Park is owned by Attacq, a JSE-listed real estate developer. It is currently tenanted by Old Mutual, the SA Revenue Service, and Regus, which provides office space on short-term leases.
In a brief response to News24’s enquiry, Attacq confirmed it owned the building and declined to answer whether it had ever entered into a sale agreement with Shula.
“As the remaining questions relate to matters that do not involve Attacq, we are not in a position to comment further,” said Liz Ferreira of public relations firm Instinctiff, on behalf of Attacq.
Pressed for more conclusive comment, Ferreira added: “The company is not transferring ownership or handing over the property to Shula Developers or the GPAA.”
Attacq has valid lease agreements on the property.
According to a record of the tender award, which ran from June to October 2024, Shula Developers emerged as the only bidder who met the requirements of the second phase of the tender process.
This phase required the property to meet the minimum B grading for office space, have a gross leasable area of at least 22 506 square metres, and have 710 parking bays on site.
The mandatory requirements of the phase read:
[The] bidder must be the owner of the property leased. Then, if the bidder has a power of attorney, a certified copy of the document must be submitted with the bid.
“A signed deed of sale agreement will be considered for property sold to one entity to the other [sic],” read the specifications before adding the agreement must be signed by both the buyer and the seller.
The other requirements were that the proposed property be within 10km of the current GPPA head office on 34 Hamilton Street in Pretoria and at least 500m away from a public transport station, which could be a taxi rank, bus station, or train station.
Any bidder who did not meet the requirements of this second phase would be disqualified from the process.
Mongezi Mngqibisa, the chief director for special military and other pensions, chaired both the bid specification and bid evaluation committees.
