Disgraced CETA Boss Malusi Shezi Vanishes as Accountability Closes In — Whereabouts Unknown

Johannesburg’s Construction Education and Training Authority headquarters fell eerily quiet last week when staff arrived to find their former chief executive’s office stripped bare, his personal belongings gone and no forwarding address left behind. Malusi Shezi, who led the skills-development body through years of mounting controversy, has reportedly abandoned contact with the institution he once ran, sparking an urgent internal search and frantic calls to his legal representatives.

Sources close to the CETA board told this publication that Shezi allegedly misappropriated public training funds exceeding R40 million during his tenure, diverting money earmarked for artisan bursaries toward undisclosed third-party entities with links to associates. He allegedly authorised irregular procurement deals, circumventing supply-chain regulations in a manner that auditors flagged repeatedly. His whereabouts remain undisclosed as investigators attempt to serve him with formal legal documents.

CETA acting chief executive Nandi Dlamini confirmed on Tuesday that the authority has referred the matter to the South African Police Service’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation — the Hawks — and has simultaneously engaged the National Prosecuting Authority. SAPS spokesperson Colonel Brenda Muridili stated that a formal docket is under assessment, though no arrest warrant has yet been issued pending the completion of documentary verification.

Shezi’s downfall accelerated after the Auditor-General’s 2022/23 report handed CETA a qualified opinion, citing R120 million in irregular expenditure accumulated across three consecutive financial years. The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Higher Education summoned him in March 2024, but he failed to appear, citing illness. The board placed him on precautionary suspension shortly afterward, stripping his executive access before he disappeared entirely from institutional engagements.

One detail chilled everyone who heard it: a junior administrator who watered the potted plants outside his corner office every Monday morning arrived last week to discover both plants removed — their ceramic pots replaced by two neat rectangular patches of dry soil pressed flat, as though someone had planned the departure methodically and taken time to erase every visible trace.

No criminal charge has formally named Shezi, and his legal team has not issued any public statement acknowledging his current location. Millions in unrecovered public funds remain frozen inside forensic review processes that could drag on for years. South Africans who built careers in construction through CETA-funded programmes are left with one burning question: who protects workers when the man trusted to do so simply walks away?

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