Kai !Garib Local Municipality runs Keimoes and Kakamas on the Orange River in the Northern Cape. Its acting municipal manager, Johnny Mackay, was the accounting officer for seven months from September 2021 to March 2022 during which, the Hawks allege, pension contributions were deducted from every employee's salary and never paid to the Consolidated Retirement Fund for Local Government, along with the municipality's employer contributions. The prejudice to the fund exceeded R9 million; the prejudice to the workers is their retirement.
Mackay — by then head of the Northern Cape Department of Public Works — was arrested by the Hawks' Serious Commercial Crime unit on 28 October 2022, charged on 271 counts under section 37(1)(a) of the Pension Funds Act, and released on R5,000 bail; the case was transferred to the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Upington. In April 2026 the SAHRC's Northern Cape inquiry separately directed the Coghsta MEC to invoke section 106 of the Systems Act over fraud allegations at Kai !Garib. The charges are untested; Mackay is presumed innocent. A former municipal manager at neighbouring !Kheis was arrested for the same offence in June 2025.