When the National Empowerment Fund ended a tender to\u00a0a Pretoria company, the black owner became “suicidal”.<\/p>\n
Had the Fund destroyed a white-owned company, it would have been just fine.\u00a0The agency’s task is to fund black-empowered businesses.<\/p>\n
Public Protector Thuli Madonsela found that\u00a0the agency contributed to the demise of Best Care Medical Supplies, which is owned by Naomi Ngwenya.<\/p>\n
The company imports and distributes medical supplies to three provincial departments of health and the Department of Defence.<\/p>\n
Ngwenya complained to Madonsela after the agency withdrew her R5-million grant in 2012.<\/p>\n
A Zimbabwean by birth, she received a letter from the agency on August 10 2012 approving her funding. But barely a month later she received a letter informing her that her funding had been withdrawn as the agency had received information that she was naturalised as a South African citizen after 1994.<\/p>\n
Releasing the report titled “Stringed Along” in Pretoria yesterday, Madonsela said by this time Ngwenya had incurred expenses. Ngwenya had been applying for funding since 2010 and the issue of her identity had never been raised, Madonsela said.<\/p>\n
Madonsela recommended that the agency apologise to Ngwenya and compensate her for the “trauma”.<\/p>\n
She also recommended that the agency revise its procedures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When the National Empowerment Fund ended a tender to\u00a0a Pretoria company, the black owner became “suicidal”. Had the Fund destroyed a white-owned company, it would have been just fine.\u00a0The agency’s task is to fund black-empowered businesses. Public Protector Thuli Madonsela found that\u00a0the agency contributed to the demise of Best Care Medical Supplies, which is owned … Continue reading “Madonsela fighting to fund black immigrants”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1372,10136,222,180],"class_list":["post-16203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-public-protector","tag-tender","tag-thuli-madonsela","tag-zimbabwe"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16203"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16205,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16203\/revisions\/16205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}