During the time I worked as e.tv’s business editor, much about its former trade unionist CEO Marcel Golding struck me as being different, not least that although fabulously wealthy, he preferred to drive an old, rather beaten-up Toyota Corolla. Golding has gone very public in his fight with his opponents on the HCI board, particularly former partner and HCI co-founder Johnny Copelyn and non executive director Yunis Shaik, brother of President Jacob Zuma’s disgraced financial advisor Shabir. CNBC Africa’s Cape Town Bureau Chief Svetlana Doneva this morning witnessed the HCI v Golding hearing in the local Labour Court. I caught up with her on Power Lunch. Subsequent to this television interview, HCI announced on SENS that Marcel Golding has resigned as an employee of the company. He has not, however, resigned as chairman of the board, nor as an employee of e.tv or Sabido. For his part, Golding is citing constructive dismissal and he believes the Disciplinary Hearing would not be fair. Shaik apparently reneged on an earlier agreement that Golding be allowed legal representation at the hearing. The company also ignored the suggestion by Justice Steenkamp that it would be best if HCI’s legal firm, Edward Nathan Sonnenberg, do not chair the hearing. – AH
ALEC HOGG: Joining us now in our Cape Town studio is CBNC Africa’s Svetlana Doneva. She was at the court this morning to see what happened there. It’s interesting that it was at the Labour Court, Svetlana. How did it all develop?
SVETLANA DONEVA: Hi, Alec. The reason why it was in the Labour Court is that Marcel Golding is not disputing the fact that he bought the shares. He’s disputing the fact that his Employers did not have the right to suspend him under the terms that they did. The basis that he put forward on Friday morning was that HCI was not his Employer. His Employers were e.tv and Sabido – the two subsidiaries of the company – and he said that HCI had overridden the boards of those two companies, had behaved unlawfully and unfairly in suspending him, and calling him to a Disciplinary Hearing. What happened this morning was that Judge Steenkamp delivered his ruling and he found that HCI was in fact, his Employer and this was because Marcel Golding draws a monthly salary of just over R480, 00.00 from HCI. On those grounds, he found that the suspension wasn’t unlawful and that HCI had every right to suspend him and to discipline him.
ALEC HOGG: What happens from here? What’s the next step in the saga as far as the courts are concerned? Svetlana, are you hearing me? Unfortunately, we have to keep trying to get hold of Svetlana but before we lose sight of what’s going on here – and you did hear the word ‘pathetic’ being used by Tumi and Cynthia Schoeman a little bit earlier. It’s pathetic if you allow the court (and what’s going on in the courts) to cloud what is really at issue here. It appears that Marcel Golding wants to bring to the public’s attention, the fact that e.tv, which is a broadcaster that reaches 12-million people in South Africa (free-to-air) has been asked by one Yunis Shaik, who is a Director on the Board of HCI to do certain things that would put people like Jacob Zuma (the President of this country) in a good light.
Indeed, amongst the issues raised in his affidavit by Marcel Golding was that Yunus Shaik, four days after the Public Protector found that Zuma had acted rather inappropriately by spending $20m on his home in KwaZulu Natal… Four days later, Yunus Shaik wanted e.tv’s main news bulleting to run with the main story of ‘Zuma opening a new dam’. Now in a news sense, that really, is very unlikely to have made it in the first place. Yunus Shaik is the brother of one Schabir Shaik who was sentenced to be imprisoned and was described to the court as having a generally corrupt relationship with President Jacob Zuma. He was described by the Public Prosecutor in that way. That puts it into context. Svetlana, the question is what happens next.
SVETLANA DONEVA: Well Alec, the Disciplinary Hearing is going to go ahead this week and so is the AGM of the Company. What Marcel Golding said on Friday is that he thinks that due to the action of the Board, they want to get him out before the AGM takes place because if the Disciplinary Hearing finds him guilty then he won’t be up for re-election on the HCI Board. That is, basically, the reason why he was trying to stop the Disciplinary Hearing from taking place this week. Whether he’s taken off the Board permanently remains to be seen when the actual Hearing takes place, but either way it looks like interesting times ahead for HCI. Of course, in this court hearing they did not deal with the ‘political interference’ allegations. It’s safe to say that Judge Steenkamp did touch on them, and he said that they were not without merit.
In the 57-page court document that Marcel Golding submitted, he had examples of SMS’s that he’d received from various Ministers, from SACTU (the trade union, which is the biggest shareholder in HCI), so the Judge said that it was not without merit. He said it was a big cause for concern – in that political figures are interfering in public news broadcasting.
ALEC HOGG: Two more pieces of perspective here: the one is that R24m Marcel Golding spent on buying into the Ellies shares compares with an R18bn market cap of HCI. It’s a drop in the ocean. The other issue was that in his Affidavit, he said he did offer, when they were starting to use that as a stick to beat him, to actually pay for those shares in his own right, which of course, as a billionaire, he’s perfectly able to do.
SVETLANA DONEVA: Yes, he did. The other thing that he argued was that he actually bought the shares around the middle of the year. He disclosed them to the Board on the 6th of August and it was only on the 14th of October – just before the AGM – that they actually summoned him to a Disciplinary Hearing and suspended him. His whole argument is ‘if buying the shares was such a big transgression, why did you wait for months to suspend me’.
ALEC HOGG: Good point. CNBC Africa’s reporter Svetlana Doneva, who was down at the Labour Court this morning, giving us the latest details there.
Barbara Hogan, the much-respected former Minister of Public Enterprises who was axed by Jacob Zuma – she was on the HCI Board – resigned last night in protest to what is going on with Marcel Golding. I did get hold of Leslie Maasdorp, another man well known in the financial community here in South Africa. He said he would not be resigning his seat on the Board. Clearly, he’s shown which side he’s taking in all of this. Just to close off with, Golding no doubt, has already raised the issue that he might be looking at Section16 of the South African Constitution, which talks about the freedom of the media and he doesn’t have to dip into Mark Shuttleworth’s R350m Fund for Constitutional issues. Golding is perfectly capable with his assets, to have that challenged in its own right. This is only the beginning of that whole story.
To read the Labour Court’s full judgement, please Click Here
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The executive chairman of South Africa’s Hosken Consolidated Investments has resigned, he said in an e-mail to staff on Monday, citing an “intolerable” relationship with the board of the investment firm.
“The relationship of confidence and trust between myself and the board of HCI has broken down due to the manner in which the HCI board has conducted itself,” Marcel Golding said in the e-mail seen by Reuters.
HCI suspended Golding last week pending a disciplinary inquiry for alleged “gross misconduct” involving the purchase of shares in electronics equipment firm Ellies Holdings.
But Golding has said he was suspended because he resisted political interference into the news content of a HCI unit, e.tv, where he is the chief executive.
On Monday Golding lost a legal appeal against the suspension.
“The manner in which HCI intended to conduct my hearing as well as the circumstances which led to the decision to bring charges against me has rendered my employment relationship with HCI intolerable,” he said in the e-mail, adding he planned to bring a claim of unfair dismissal against the company.
No one was immediately available for comment at HCI.
Shares of the company were down 1 percent at 148.51 at 1435 GMT.
