Meet James Styan, author of SA’s new bestseller The Bosasa Billions

Part-time bureaucrat James Styan's fourth book is his best selling yet, with the initial print run sold out within days of The Bosasa Billions hitting the shelves. On Rational Radio this week he shared the back story of researching a tale that has made household names of the now bankrupt company's chief protagonists Gavin Watson and Angelo Agrizzi. He also offers the similarities he found between Watson and former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste, key personality in one of Styan's previous quick-off-the-mark books about SA's biggest corporate collapse. – Alec Hogg

James Styan explained what prompted him to write the book 'Bosasa Billions' before the story had run its course. He said he thought  the inquiry into Bosasa was going to drag on for many years, by which time most of the people directly affected by it, might not be around anymore. It was in the public interest to get a better idea of the inquiry into Bosasa: Who the Zondo commission was, what they were trying to establish, who Angelo Agrizzi was, who the Watsons were and where they came from? Styan said most people were not able to follow the Zondo commission. There was a lot of information coming out and he wanted to bring out a book which brought the testimonies together and provided the foundation to analyse further information as it came up.

Styan had also written books about Steinhoff and Eskom and he said he was not trying to be some soothsayer, but with regard to those two; it did seem that events developed in the way that he had predicted. "When you look at Eskom, I certainly predicted that South Africa would be going up to Stage 4 load shedding and possibly beyond that, and that is what happened earlier this year when the country had the worst load shedding it has ever seen." He said he wrote the books hoping people might see value in them and that it could enable leaders in positions of authority to make the right decisions. People could not say they were not informed or didn't know.

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