Duduzane to offload Oakbay shares

Duduzane Zuma, the son of President Jacob Zuma, says he is in the process of selling his shares in Gupta-owned Oakbay companies.

Duduzane Zuma has been deeply immersed in the Gupta family and their businesses, leaked Gupta e-mails show.

They tell of the family helping him buy an expensive home in Dubai, organising and paying for his wedding and solving problems in his personal life.

He has been a director of 21 companies, but has resigned from the boards of most of them in the past year. He is still a director of seven companies that seem to have stopped trading.

However, it is believed that through his company, Mabengela Investments, he owns nearly R850m worth of shares in Gupta-owned companies.

In August, Oakbay said that it was selling its media assets — Infinity Media and The New Age — to Mzwanele Manyi.

The group was also in the process of selling its mining asset, Tegeta. Zuma had shares in all these companies.

The sale of assets by the Gupta family was linked to the closure of its accounts by several banks.

In an open letter sent to former finance minister Pravin Gordhan in August, Zuma said that all of his bank accounts had been shut.

He accused Gordhan of using structures such as the Financial Intelligence Centre and the South African Reserve Bank “to destroy” him and “his business colleagues”.

On Tuesday, Zuma announced that the money from the shares in the media businesses would go to a youth development programme.

Manyi, who is believed to have grossly overpaid for the media assets, committed to paying R300m for ANN7 news channel and R150m for a twothirds stake in TNA Media, the publisher of The New Age.

The media deal is vendorfinanced through a loan from Oakbay Investments.

It is not clear how Zuma’s new youth programme will be set up, but he said it would focus on “creating real and sustainable” jobs. “While this new programme has a specific interest in graduates, it will be for all young people, male and female, regardless of background,” he said.

More details of the project would be provided in coming weeks, Zuma said.