Guptas ‘counted on Dlamini-Zuma victory to save Brian Molefe’

The Gupta family wanted Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to win the ANC presidency at the party’s 2017 Nasrec conference to bring Brian Molefe back to the helm of Eskom.

This is according to evidence led by former Eskom company secretary and head of its legal affairs Suzanne Daniels at the state capture inquiry on Tuesday. Daniels laid bare an incident at Melrose Arch in Johannesburg in July 2017 when she said she had met Ajay Gupta, former president Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane Zuma and then public enterprises deputy minister Ben Martins. At the time of the meeting, Molefe had taken Eskom to court seeking an order declaring his dismissal unlawful.

Daniels said she received a call from Gupta associate Salim Essa to “meet for coffee” at the African Pride Hotel. Instead, he took her to an apartment, where Gupta, Zuma and Martins, as well as “an Asian lady whose name I cannot remember” were waiting.

“Salim Essa gestured to Mr Gupta, saying: ‘Tell him what happened to Mr Molefe’s case’.

“I said ‘we are going to the deputy judge president’s office next month [August], and we would be discussing the case management’.

“Mr Gupta then responded to the people in the room, saying we would need to find someone in the deputy judge president’s office to move this case out.”

Gupta was apparently not pleased that Daniels was not being helpful. Daniels testified: “He said this matter would be easy to deal with when Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma comes into power, and I realised at that moment that whatever scepticism I had about the Guptas’ influence, I did not need much evidence.”

I said ‘we are going to the deputy judge president’s office next month