The Great Train Robbery: How a Fake Engineer Cost PRASA R2.7 Billion

For a moment, he was the perfect success story. Mshushisi Daniel Mthimkhulu, hailed as an embodiment of black excellence, rose from a Metrorail intern to the head of engineering at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa. There was just one devastating problem: it was all built on a lie. His falsified qualifications culminated in a botched tender that cost taxpayers R2.7 billion and left the country with diesel locomotives that were utterly useless.

This is the story of how one man’s deception, enabled by a broken system, became a multi-billion rand monument to state capture and its crippling cost to ordinary South Africans.

The Whistleblower and the Too-Tall Trains

The facade began to crack in 2015. Whistleblowers within the rail industry approached a newspaper with an unbelievable revelation: Prasa had spent R600 million on 13 brand new diesel locomotives that it could not use. The problem was almost comically simple. The “Afro 4000” locomotives, ordered from a Spanish manufacturer, were too tall for South Africa’s rail infrastructure, posing a severe safety risk.

In a fierce rebuttal, Prasa attacked the media report as “grossly inaccurate.” To bolster its case, the agency presented Mthimkhulu as their highly qualified expert who had signed off on the project. The only problem was that the newspaper was right, and their star engineer was a fraud.

The Unraveling of a Fabricated Genius

The man entrusted with one of the state’s most critical technical roles had only a matric certificate. The diploma, degree, and prestigious German PhD he claimed were all clever forgeries. He had even forged a job offer from a German company with a salary of €200,000, which Prasa then matched, giving him a 70% raise.

For years, he was celebrated in Parliament as proof that the government’s investment in education was working. Even as his lies were exposed, former Prasa CEO Lucky Montana defended him, dismissing critics as racists and arguing that many others had lied about their qualifications without facing jail time.

The Staggering Price of a Single Deception

The final bill for this deception is a hard number: R2.7 billion. That is the value of the failed locomotive contract that Mthimkhulu, the unqualified engineer, helped oversee. This money, intended to revitalize South Africa’s crumbling passenger rail system, was completely wasted.

The consequences extended far beyond the financial loss. This failure contributed to the further decay of a service millions of commuters depend on, deepening the transportation crisis and hurting the economy.

In September 2024, Mshushisi Daniel Mthimkhulu was finally sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud. His case is a stark reminder that the cost of corruption is never abstract. It is measured in billions of rands lost and in the daily struggle of citizens who are left to pay the price for the lies of the powerful.