Revelations about the close proximity between President Jacob Zuma, his family and the Guptas have reached unprecedented levels.
It is my firm view these relationships – their scale of influence and the shared state-business interests – demands attention at the highest national legislative level.
The SACP has also voiced concern about “a capture of the state” to the ANC’s national executive committee.
For these reasons, I have appealed to parliament to investigate a possible threat to the security of the country’s resources.
Almost daily, we learn from various public sources of transactions and deals which in one way or another, are highly questionable. Common to many are Gupta family businesses, the son of the president, Duduzane Zuma, and various arms of state.
Duduzane’s rapid rise as a new block of business is not found in our record books. All we know is that it was only after his father became president that Duduzane became one of SA’s most prominent business figures.
The president is on record confirming his personal relationship with the Guptas, which is apparently independent of that of his son. He has also defended his son’s meteoric rise in tandem with the Gupta family.
Indeed, the president was recently quoted saying there was nothing sinister in the relationship between his son and the Guptas since his son had started with them as an employee and was now a business partner.
But the fact remains, part of the massive wealth accumulated by Duduzane Zuma and the Gupta’s mining and media empires within a very short time is as a result of political directives made to government or state owned enterprises.
The recent acquisition of Glencore’s Optimum Coal mine by the Gupta- owned Tegata Exploration and Resources company, is a case in point.
According to AmaBhungani, Duduzane is the biggest single shareholder in this deal with around 30%.
The timeline of events around Tegata’s acquisition of the mine tells a story:
l August 2015: Optimum coal mine is placed in business rescue after failing to persuade its client, Eskom, to renegotiate a longstanding deal to buy coal. Rising production costs had outstripped the old price. When Eskom refused to renegotiate, Optimum faltered. Eskom also claimed the coal was substandard.
l September 2015: President Zuma replaced mining minister Ngoako Ramathlodi with Mosebenzi Zwane, a mining novice, but a crony who reportedly helped cover the Guptas’ tracks in the 2103 Waterfall Air Base debacle;
l Early December 2015: Zwane, the only SA official with authority to sign off an exchange of mineral rights, accompanied the Guptas to Switzerland to finalise the purchase by Tegata from Glencore. It is still unclear where the money to pay the R2.1-billion price tag will come from;
l December 8: President Zuma fires Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene and replaces him with David Des van Rooyen. The new minister comes with two so-called advisers who are not only allegedly linked to the same Gupta family, but one, Ian Whitely, is the son-in-law of ANC deputy secretary general, Jessie Duarte. The other, Mohommed Bobat, reportedly knew that Van Rooyen was going to be finance minister some two months before Nene did.
With Van Rooyen’s arrival at the ministry his “advisers” began issuing orders, fuelling speculation that control of the country’s purse strings had been “captured”;
l December 12: Zuma is forced to replace Van Rooyen with Pravin Gordhan;
l December 13: The Gupta- owned Tegata company is named new owner of Optimum coal mine;
l January 2016: Eskom agrees to continue sourcing coal from Optimum – despite having insisted that the coal was substandard. Eskom also extends a contract to Optimum to supply a second power station.
And Eskom signs a third contract with another Gupta-owned coal mine, Kroonfontein, to supply yet another power station, Komati.
This is not the end of Duduzane’s involvement in Gupta-controlled mining companies. He is reportedly a shareholder in Shiva Uranium.
This company, with uranium resources and a processing plant, is ideally placed to benefit from the nuclear power programme Nene opposed and which Gordhan is also resisting due to the massive costs.
But back to coal, the same two families have also just obtained coal exporting rights via the Richards Bay coal terminal. Once again Duduzane is a major beneficiary.
Duduzane is also a director of the Gupta family’s holding company, Sahara.
If there is no precedent for Duduzane in SA, one could consider Angola where President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ daughter, Isabel, is Africa’s first female dollar billionaire.
In a 2013 expose Forbes magazine stated: “As best as we can trace, every major Angolan investment held by Dos Santos stems either from taking a chunk of a company that wants to do business in the country or from the stroke of the president’s pen that cut her into the action... For President Dos Santos it’s a foolproof way to extract money from his country while keeping a putative arm’s-length distance away.”
While President Zuma’s written signature is absent in Duduzane’s case, there are a litany of directives, arrangements and questionable transactions involving government departments and/or state owned enterprises where policy or the legislative framework has not been followed to the letter.
Such questionable arrangements – although not necessarily featuring Duduzane directly – also relate to the pro-Zuma Gupta-owned newspaper, the New Age.
The newspaper has reportedly received more than R70-million from various state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to sponsor a New Age breakfast show on SABC2. Meanwhile our public broadcaster does not charge the New Age a cent. It gets zero while millions go to the family business. In the shows the president and cabinet members are trotted out – that is, until Gordhan snubbed the show after his budget speech.
The New Age also rakes in revenue as government’s main media advertiser as well as through its deal with SAA to make the newspaper available for onboard reading.
Yet another example of questionable arrangements recently came to light over a partnership between the state-owned arms manufacturer, Denel, and the Gupta’s Boksburg steel cutting company, VR Laser.
Last month it emerged that neither Public Enterprises Minister, Lynne Brown, nor the Treasury had approved the joint venture, rendering it illegitimate in terms of the Public Finance Management Act.
The union Solidarity has asked the Public Protector to investigate.
Clearly the reach of these two families extends far beyond breakfast shows. It also raises the question, who is playing who? Are the Guptas playing Zuma, or is Zuma playing the Guptas?
The answer is uncertain. What is sure is that by the time President Zuma leaves the Union Buildings his family will have built up a multibillion empire through the same kind of unorthodox methods witnessed in the Nkandla debacle.
These disturbing reports are obviously a source of growing discomfort for the nation and also undermine confidence of both local and outside investors.
The role of the president’s children and family in siphoning off national resources has surely played no small part in the downgrades by international ratings institutions. No business person in their right mind could be encouraged to invest in a country whose economy is run by one or two families.
Zuma has indeed come a long way — from having to be helped out with petrol money before 2007 to being the patriarch of a family with a massive business empire today.
Sadly in the eyes of the ANC Jacob Zuma is a celebrity and a role model. I believe parliament is best placed to investigate.
Bantu Holomisa is an MP and UDM president. *Disclosure, in 2011 the UDM was one of several political parties to which the Gupta family madea donation (R100000)
Opinion: Save us from Zuptas
It is my firm view these relationships – their scale of influence and the shared state-business interests – demands attention at the highest national legislative level.
The SACP has also voiced concern about “a capture of the state” to the ANC’s national executive committee.
For these reasons, I have appealed to parliament to investigate a possible threat to the security of the country’s resources.
Almost daily, we learn from various public sources of transactions and deals which in one way or another, are highly questionable. Common to many are Gupta family businesses, the son of the president, Duduzane Zuma, and various arms of state.
Duduzane’s rapid rise as a new block of business is not found in our record books. All we know is that it was only after his father became president that Duduzane became one of SA’s most prominent business figures.
The president is on record confirming his personal relationship with the Guptas, which is apparently independent of that of his son. He has also defended his son’s meteoric rise in tandem with the Gupta family.
Indeed, the president was recently quoted saying there was nothing sinister in the relationship between his son and the Guptas since his son had started with them as an employee and was now a business partner.
But the fact remains, part of the massive wealth accumulated by Duduzane Zuma and the Gupta’s mining and media empires within a very short time is as a result of political directives made to government or state owned enterprises.
The recent acquisition of Glencore’s Optimum Coal mine by the Gupta- owned Tegata Exploration and Resources company, is a case in point.
According to AmaBhungani, Duduzane is the biggest single shareholder in this deal with around 30%.
The timeline of events around Tegata’s acquisition of the mine tells a story:
l August 2015: Optimum coal mine is placed in business rescue after failing to persuade its client, Eskom, to renegotiate a longstanding deal to buy coal. Rising production costs had outstripped the old price. When Eskom refused to renegotiate, Optimum faltered. Eskom also claimed the coal was substandard.
l September 2015: President Zuma replaced mining minister Ngoako Ramathlodi with Mosebenzi Zwane, a mining novice, but a crony who reportedly helped cover the Guptas’ tracks in the 2103 Waterfall Air Base debacle;
l Early December 2015: Zwane, the only SA official with authority to sign off an exchange of mineral rights, accompanied the Guptas to Switzerland to finalise the purchase by Tegata from Glencore. It is still unclear where the money to pay the R2.1-billion price tag will come from;
l December 8: President Zuma fires Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene and replaces him with David Des van Rooyen. The new minister comes with two so-called advisers who are not only allegedly linked to the same Gupta family, but one, Ian Whitely, is the son-in-law of ANC deputy secretary general, Jessie Duarte. The other, Mohommed Bobat, reportedly knew that Van Rooyen was going to be finance minister some two months before Nene did.
With Van Rooyen’s arrival at the ministry his “advisers” began issuing orders, fuelling speculation that control of the country’s purse strings had been “captured”;
l December 12: Zuma is forced to replace Van Rooyen with Pravin Gordhan;
l December 13: The Gupta- owned Tegata company is named new owner of Optimum coal mine;
l January 2016: Eskom agrees to continue sourcing coal from Optimum – despite having insisted that the coal was substandard. Eskom also extends a contract to Optimum to supply a second power station.
And Eskom signs a third contract with another Gupta-owned coal mine, Kroonfontein, to supply yet another power station, Komati.
This is not the end of Duduzane’s involvement in Gupta-controlled mining companies. He is reportedly a shareholder in Shiva Uranium.
This company, with uranium resources and a processing plant, is ideally placed to benefit from the nuclear power programme Nene opposed and which Gordhan is also resisting due to the massive costs.
But back to coal, the same two families have also just obtained coal exporting rights via the Richards Bay coal terminal. Once again Duduzane is a major beneficiary.
Duduzane is also a director of the Gupta family’s holding company, Sahara.
If there is no precedent for Duduzane in SA, one could consider Angola where President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ daughter, Isabel, is Africa’s first female dollar billionaire.
In a 2013 expose Forbes magazine stated: “As best as we can trace, every major Angolan investment held by Dos Santos stems either from taking a chunk of a company that wants to do business in the country or from the stroke of the president’s pen that cut her into the action... For President Dos Santos it’s a foolproof way to extract money from his country while keeping a putative arm’s-length distance away.”
While President Zuma’s written signature is absent in Duduzane’s case, there are a litany of directives, arrangements and questionable transactions involving government departments and/or state owned enterprises where policy or the legislative framework has not been followed to the letter.
Such questionable arrangements – although not necessarily featuring Duduzane directly – also relate to the pro-Zuma Gupta-owned newspaper, the New Age.
The newspaper has reportedly received more than R70-million from various state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to sponsor a New Age breakfast show on SABC2. Meanwhile our public broadcaster does not charge the New Age a cent. It gets zero while millions go to the family business. In the shows the president and cabinet members are trotted out – that is, until Gordhan snubbed the show after his budget speech.
The New Age also rakes in revenue as government’s main media advertiser as well as through its deal with SAA to make the newspaper available for onboard reading.
Yet another example of questionable arrangements recently came to light over a partnership between the state-owned arms manufacturer, Denel, and the Gupta’s Boksburg steel cutting company, VR Laser.
Last month it emerged that neither Public Enterprises Minister, Lynne Brown, nor the Treasury had approved the joint venture, rendering it illegitimate in terms of the Public Finance Management Act.
The union Solidarity has asked the Public Protector to investigate.
Clearly the reach of these two families extends far beyond breakfast shows. It also raises the question, who is playing who? Are the Guptas playing Zuma, or is Zuma playing the Guptas?
The answer is uncertain. What is sure is that by the time President Zuma leaves the Union Buildings his family will have built up a multibillion empire through the same kind of unorthodox methods witnessed in the Nkandla debacle.
These disturbing reports are obviously a source of growing discomfort for the nation and also undermine confidence of both local and outside investors.
The role of the president’s children and family in siphoning off national resources has surely played no small part in the downgrades by international ratings institutions. No business person in their right mind could be encouraged to invest in a country whose economy is run by one or two families.
Zuma has indeed come a long way — from having to be helped out with petrol money before 2007 to being the patriarch of a family with a massive business empire today.
Sadly in the eyes of the ANC Jacob Zuma is a celebrity and a role model. I believe parliament is best placed to investigate.
Bantu Holomisa is an MP and UDM president. *Disclosure, in 2011 the UDM was one of several political parties to which the Gupta family madea donation (R100000)
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