By Alec Hogg
Last week, Africa’s second longest serving President announced he will be stepping down in 2017. Angola’s Kleptocrat-in-chief, Jose Eduardo do Santos (74), has been running the oil rich state since September 1979. He shades Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe (92) by seven months. Both have ruled for slightly less than Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Mbasoro (74) who assumed office there a month before Dos Santos.
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Dos Santos may be leaving Luanda’s Presidential Palace, but will continue to control the national honey pot. His daughter Isabel, Africa’s richest woman, runs Sonangol, the State oil company. This operation accounts for 40% of GDP, generates 95% of Angola’s foreign exchange earnings and pays 70% of Government revenue. Jose dos Santos Jnr runs the other large Angolan entity worth controlling, its $5bn Sovereign Wealth fund.
It is the likes of Dos Santos whom South African President Jacob Zuma idolises. When Zuma talks in glowing terms about “other Presidents” he refers not to emerging democrats in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and even Kenya. His idols are the Big Men of Africa, the plundering scourge of this embattled continent.
In 2009, soon after ascending to the Presidency, Zuma paid the first of numerous visits to Angola and Equatorial Guinea. Little is known about the Angola trip, but in March this year trade union leader Zwelinzima Vavi opened up on the Equatorial Guinea adventure. Vavi says he and the rest of the delegation need not have bothered going because Zuma, son Duduzane and Rajesh Gupta spent the trip closeted with President Mbasoro, reputedly worth $500m in a country where most survive on under $1 a day.
Back then Zuma might have been a State Capture novice, but he learnt quickly from Africa’s best. Court papers analysed by the excellent amaBhungane investigative journalism unit show us the modus operandi. The first step was to identify a “business partner” like the Guptas, then enlist pawns who were well rewarded, but kept in line with a loaded gun pointed at their heads.
When Brian Molefe was seconded to run Eskom in March last year, staffers I know were delighted the supposedly respectable former Transnet bossman would clean up the place. Within weeks they realised he was worse than any predecessor. Molefe quickly killed an agreement with Optimum mine (which Eskom then gave the Guptas money to buy) and suspended Eskom’s coal engineers after they refused poor quality coal from a Gupta mine.
Evidence now emerging in court reveals that while Molefe was Transnet CEO (2011-2015), a Gupta shell company Homix routinely charged 10% for contracts awarded by the transport parastatal. Neotel farmed the Homix connection well. It paid R35m to the Gupta front company in early 2014 for a Transnet IT equipment contract worth R300m. Later that year it negotiated the kickback down to 2% (R41m) to get a R1.8bn infrastructure contract from Transnet. Neotel’s CEO and FD were fired after auditors exposed their actions.
During one six month period, R144m went into Homix, mostly from Transnet. Little wonder the Eskom CEO broke down and babbled about a “Saxonwold shebeen” when confronted by the media shortly before his resignation. Molefe was bought and paid for by the Guptas some years before, perhaps even ahead of his arrival at Transnet. Pressure of a loaded gun can crack the toughest nut. And as Molefe has shown, this desk jockey is really not tough at all.
