Garth Brook: “Crocodile-eating” attorney needed to fight the Public Protector

In this interview with Chris Steyn, Garth Brook, the founder of River Rangers in Clarence, details his five-year battle with the Public Protector to ensure outstanding salaries are paid for a community-based programme that - at its height - employed over 180 people in one of the country’s most poverty-stricken areas. Brook says when he first approached the Public Protector, he thought “in my stupidity and naivety that this is where God settles the deal. These are the people that protect the public. That's not true. That is absolutely not true.” Brook describes five years of evidence, submissions, patience, and “Stalingrad”-like silences… “I need an attorney that eats live crocodiles for breakfast…. I'm looking for a tough bullet-nosed attorney so that we can take this Public Protector to the cleaners and say, guys, sorry, the nonsense has got to stop.”.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:00.94)What all can go wrong when a community-based programme engages with a government poverty relief programme? Let us find out from Garth Brook, the founder of River Rangers in Clarence. Welcome, Garth.Chris Steyn (00:49.196)Garth, let's start by you telling us what was the aim of your initiative.Garth Brook (00:57.56)Okay, well, you know, Chris, fly fishing became almost a religion of mine in a way. And I came from a high tech industry and bombed out and said, I want to get involved. And fly fishing takes you to the environment and takes you to rivers, particularly rivers. Okay. And it's a long story, but anyway, by default, the government asked me to come to Clarence area to look for employment and teach people to get involved in river rehabilitation or fly fishing and that kind of stuff. And so we got involved in that. And the whole process has been cleaning up these … and maintaining up the river systems. And soon discovered, of course, that the people that you employ are in poverty. There is huge poverty out here. This is not like the cosmopolitan Pretoria, Joburg where I came from. These people, you've got a family, woman does the work and that's it. There is no other work. We don't have Sasols. We don't have Toyotas or BMWs. There is nothing, okay, other than dinosaurs, which we can talk about some other time, but not really. And I got seriously involved in that.And we did very well with the Department of Environmental Affairs, I'll tell them, sorry, I lied, tourism, Department of Tourism. And we did so well. We got project after project, we employed, and it's hard. It's hard, Chris. When you employ people, they used say to me, but you you want to employ 80 people and 300 pitch up and 350 pitch up. How do you employ them? And we'd have to get them to put their ID books into a can, sort of a plastic can. And the first 80 that came out… got the job and then the rest had to walk away. Chris, it's hard. It's bloody hard. Chris Steyn (02:46.702)At the height of your programme, how many people did you manage to give employment to? Garth Brook (02:52.55)We got to the top of 182 people and that's just 80% of the females. And that range between Clarence and Ficksburg, we were growing, you know, and everything went well until suddenly things changed. Working for Water, did a... We had a contract with Working for Water and Working for Water is a great brand.Chris Steyn (03:11.214)How did it go wrong? Garth Brook (03:22.214)…and there’s no doubt about it, it's got a good brand, but that brand is gone. They've destroyed that brand and I'm saying that hard, it is hard. It's a great idea, a great initiative and it should have been looked after a lot better than it is at the moment. Okay, so we got up to 182 people and three months into the contract, they decided to change the game. Okay, and the game was to move from normal employment where we use biometric system. Biometric is a thumbprint, know, job in, job out, you get paid for work. No problem, people got paid in 30 days, everybody was happy. And in came this whole new scheme without any consultation with the implementer, because we are an implementer, that's what our function is. And they just decided that this was it. And we had half a day's training, although when you ask them, they say training was provided. You know, the wrong word training is actually half a day. Nobody can learn on half a day, okay? We never consulted about whether this will work or not. And they came in with some really fancy stuff that doesn't work. It's just crazy. I mean, job categorisation. They only pay people when everybody's finished doing all their different work. Now we had something like 20 contractors. So all 20 contractors have to finish their allocated work before anybody gets paid. So you can sit six months, four to five, six months, and wait for money in a poverty-stricken area. The guys have lost the plot, completely lost the plot. So we ended the contract. We didn't sign off. There's no sign off for the contract. And I proved that we signed off at all. And we sold off a lot of our assets to pay people to stop, the people that actually really, I mean, I'm talking about people who got nothing. We paid them all off and the management of ourselves included. We haven't got paid. We haven't seen a cent in five years. And I took the case to the Public Protector.Chris Steyn (05:25.933)Let's go there Garth, what has your experience been engaging with the Public Protector to try and get redress here?Garth Brook (05:36.038)Yeah, that is the core issue. That's a good question, Chris. Chris, the Public Protector, I thought in my stupidity and naivety that this is where God settles the deal. These are the people that protect the public. That's not true. That is absolutely not true. Five years! And I think I try to copy you on some of the mail just to keep you in touch too, because I don't think you would believe me, Chris. I mean, most of time I think you do trust me, but this time you would have said, would have asked, are smoking? Because five years is a long time, okay? But we had to do the process. We had to go through the due process. Otherwise we get accused of being hyperactive or whatever. And we had to prove to them, which we did, that this money was owing and that we want to be paid.And they disappear with the thought. Silence is the game that they play. I think they learned this in Russia. What's it called? Stalingrad technique or something like that. I don't know, but they just back off and back off and disappear. And you get no answers to your emails. You get no answers to anything that you drive. You find that they eventually will have like a hearing. We had a hearing. And I came out positive. I really thought, this is how good they are at it, you know. I thought, well, you know, these guys are not so bad after all, Garth, you know, Garth, you're the bad guy. You really must wake up this time and be nice to people you know, people done by nice people. And as it turned out, well, nothing happened about that. After the hearing…there was meant to be a report for the hearing, and that report will then decide whether justice will be given and whether we will get paid or not - and we had our case all wrapped up and wired. And I soon discovered, Chris, that there's a lot of good people in Working for Water. There's a lot of really, and the young people are really good people. And they blame them, they look at them and say, you're at fault. Well, they're not at fault. The problem lies within middle management of Working for Water. And that is something that ... Garth Brook (07:59.334)…the Minister is going to have to address if he hasn't already on what's going on there now. But what I am certain about is the period that we worked there, the good brand was failing. And then the Public Protector was protecting that. And we're not protecting the River Rangers. They were not looking after us to say that you guys do deserve to get paid and that this should be happening or that should. It was absolutely and to this hour, there's not been a single initiative from the Protector to say guys, here's the report, this is what we found, this is what you must do to solve this problem. And it's a sad moment for a South African because we're all South Africans, Chris, I don't know where these guys come from, you know, they seem to put themselves somewhere else and think that they can just decide for us whether we're going to get paid or not. It's not. It's a fundamental problem with the system. It's corrupt. It's got to be. Chris Steyn (08:56.589)Are you saying that the whole system is compromised? Is that how it feels like to you? Garth Brook (09:01.862)I'm sitting here. I think that's correct, Chris, you're right. You know, you hit the nail on the head, I mean, it's compromised completely. It's not something that, it's not even negotiable. It's that silence, that deadly silence that you have to sit through night after night, day after day. You've got banks to talk to who don't listen to you because you can't blame them. They're in the private sector, that's their business. But suddenly you are absolutely nothing to anybody. You've got no money coming in. You're not going to get employment because there is no other employment. And you get told as well… So after 182 people in the field and even today, people will stop in the street. Black people, folks from the township, and say to you, Mr. Brook, when are you coming back? Because they haven't got work. And it's a political thing. Working for Water must jump out of the politics and get back to employing people and employing proper implementers. I mean, we were more than willing and still are today, in fact, happy to work with Working for Water …We'll get it right for them because it's a damn good product. It seriously does employ people and it can work very, very well. It's got nothing wrong with it…The environment needs it, our river systems need it. I mean, the water quality is shocking. We in the upper reaches of the Vaal, that Orange River system, that's the drinking water for the metropolitan. You can't drink the water here, Chris, never mind when it gets down there. So there's an awful lot of work to do. And tourism's our business. Fly fishing is our business, you know? And we've got to clean up the water, clean up the act, and it's a great opportunity to do that.But it's been compromised, as you correctly said, totally, completely. And the Public Protector is not supporting and supporting and have no intention of, honestly. It's almost as though they're answering to a Third Wave or something.Chris Steyn (11:08.845)Without help from the Public Protector. How can you take this forward?Garth Brook (11:14.406)Well, know, seriously, I'm looking for an attorney that can work pro bono. But I need an attorney that eats live crocodiles for breakfast. If such a thing exists… I'm looking for a tough bullet-nosed attorney that we can take this Public Protector to the cleaners and say, guys, sorry, the nonsense has got to stop. We are South Africans. I heard it with the BizNews conference. How many times did people talk about what is the solution? What is the solution? The solution is accountability. They have to be made accountable. Every single one of them. I've got great support from Advocate Breytenbach. She was helping me. Also, she just sort of like threw arms and said, well, good luck and carry on. I would like to have someone really assist us and help us and pull it together because we can. And I would certainly invite the Department of Environmental Affairs to come to the party and let's get it right. There's no problem. I don't see a problem. We can fix it. They must just pay their bills and get on with life.Chris Steyn (12:34.765)Garth, isn't it sad that you would need an attorney to take on the Public Protector who's supposed to protect you for free?Garth Brook (12:43.366)Am I asking for the impossible? Yeah, I don't know. Basically, we have to; we have no money. What happens is, the Stalingrad approach that they use, it's so well taught by the Russians, I think, is you end up with no money because you're sitting for five years going through a process of justifying yourself, justifying the reasons that you are taking this to the Public Protector. And eventually you run out of funds and then you've got nothing. And that is when it all collapses. Everything around you collapses. And you wonder why. What have I done wrong? I mean, I didn't come here looking for trouble. I came here to employ people and I've done my job. And so the people working around me, the accountants, you know, these projects to run properly, take people, you don't just employ a couple of people in the field. You have an accountant, you have to have a serious accountant because you're buying a lot of equipment, protection equipment, daily, you've got fuel bills, you've got salary, monthly salaries to look at, and all your time sheets and stuff. We used to use time sheets properly, not this flaky time sheets that they use. By the way, that's another thing. The system they employed is, to a large extent, is fraud, because it's the...the time sheets are typed in, they have to be perfectly clean. Now you can't work in the field with perfectly clean time sheets. They're going to get gravel, they're going to get dirt on them, chainsaw oil, whatever the case may be, rain also affects it, and time sheets become dirty. So that's why we use the biometric system. But that was canceled, that is not a good idea. No, no, you must use time sheets. Now the time sheets are used, and I've proved it to the Public Protector, they typed, typed. Okay, so in other words, contractors sitting at home… and say, hello, I did today's work and I went to Pick ‘n Pay on the way here. I worked eight to five…The EPWP, Extended Public Works Program. They look for one thing, that's job mandates. That's how they justify their existence and that's how they justify their funding. And I can tell you right now on this programme, those figures are…Garth Brook (15:04.254)…they're not nearly as close to what they should be. The only way to do it is a biometric system. Pick ‘n Pay and these people all use these biometrics. The banks use them. Why can't we use that? Because it's too accurate, maybe? I don't know. So we've got that problem too. A lot of those problems to iron out with whoever wants to do it. I need, as I said, a bull-nosed attorney to sort out our finances. I need the Department of Environmental Affairs to come in and sort out the future. And Chris Steyn to come visit us in Clarence would be lovely.Chris Steyn (15:38.945)Thank you, Garth. I have been following your correspondence, Garth, aghast really. And what message has this experience made you want to give to South Africans?Garth Brook (16:02.052)I think, okay, I think there's a strong message here, Chris. Thank you. And thanks for that opportunity, Chris. I think I would like to say to the Public Protector that we are all South Africans, all of us. We're all from one home, one house, and that's called Southern Africa. And just put down all this nonsense you've got there. Come home, come and sit and talk to us and see what you've done. Once you've done that, you will realise it is your job, okay? That's number one. South Africans must understand. We've got to learn to forgive, forget, and move on, okay? I think that I'm not going to give up. I have no intention of giving up. Chris Steyn (17:42.177)That was Garth Brook, the founder of River Rangers in Clarence. Speaking to BizNews, I am Chris Steyn. Thank you, Garth.

Garth Brook: “Crocodile-eating” attorney needed to fight the Public Protector

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