‘SA cannot allow Ramaphosa graft to win, SA’s financial future is at stake’
SOUTH Africa’s largest asset manager, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), has invested over R1.6 trillion on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). In 2022, nearly 30 years after democracy opened the country to business, less than 1% of this magnificent sum (it’s a lot of zeroes), has been invested in black-owned companies.
It’s not because there are not enough black-owned or managed organisations out there though, to my mind, it’s because the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The outcry over the PIC’s investment into Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC) and Ayo Technology Solutions (AYO) is a case in point.
Especially that of AYO, of whom reams of articles have been written, in what appears to be a deliberate attempt by the “establishment” media to undermine the investment, even going so far as to allude to it being a loan to Dr Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo Investment Holdings (SIH), or even Survé directly. Complete falsehoods.
The PIC in fact, invested in an 80page pre-listing-statement (PLS) that went through all the PIC’s rigorous investment committees. Liking what they saw and the potential of investing into the single fastest and most dominant industry on earth – technology – the PIC decided to take a 30% stake as a SPAC, as they effectively wanted negative control, which they continue to exercise today.
Underlining the value of the investment, the PIC has been the recipient of around R400 million in dividends since AYO’s listing in December, 2017. This is a pretty good return for any investment, especially given the sharp global economic downturn over the past two years or more, thanks to a succession of economic restrictions and lockdowns courtesy of Covid-19.
Despite this though, AYO has been under attack from a rapacious media cohort in South Africa who have singled out just one of the company’s in-direct shareholders, Dr Iqbal Survé, in what appears to be a co-ordinated effort to devalue the tech investment giant and tarnish Survé’s reputation.
An example of this, is the recent JSE public censure and fining of two former directors linked to AYO, for their actions in 2017 and 2018 – that’s five years ago – with all the media, in unison, using an image of Survé to drive attention to their stories.
Why? Survé is neither a direct shareholder on the board or part of the management team. Why not use the PIC’s name and image in these articles?
As an organisation having board representation and having one of the biggest direct stakes in AYO, one would have expected to see them have a mention, and even a comment.
As to the timing of the JSE’s public outing of their “findings”, given AYO was due to post its end of year results in that same week…
Yet in another instance, and in the same week, Renée Bonorchis, Bloomberg’s local correspondent and a former journalist with South Africa’s “establishment” media, reported on AYO’s decision to pay out a dividend despite reporting a loss, deliberately including Surve’s name and image in her story but no mention, again, of the dividends that will accrue to the PIC.
Further, Bonorchis’s use of phrasing in her article, referring to the PIC’s looming court date with AYO, where she writes that AYO “is in a court battle over the billions it took from Africa’s largest fund manager…” is designed to further undermine the company.
How different would that sentence have read if it had been written as “in a court battle over the billions Africa’s largest fund manager invested in it…”?
Survé has gone from media darling in the 1990s and early 2000s when he was fêted by the establishment and recognised with more than 20 awards for his outstanding business acumen and contribution to the South African business landscape to being cast as the villain of the piece.
That this lauding abruptly stopped in 2013, the year he happened to become chairman of Independent Media, is no coincidence.
Countless articles have since been churned out by a succession of young, and even seasoned reporters looking to become the next Pulitzer Prize winner, without fact, substance or a care for the damage these acts of fiction.
This is not simply a matter of reporting incorrectly – it is fake news.
One does not need to look far to understand that Survé’s claims of a co-ordinated campaign against him have a ring of truth about them.
In the pursuit of vilifying him, media houses and reporters have angled their headlines and used his image for clickbait.
The genesis of the anti-Survé campaign may have been his leading the consortium that returned Independent Media to South Africa, but the foundation of much of Survé and AYO’s current woes is the Mpati Commission Report into alleged impropriety at the PIC, which called for further investigation into the AYO deal.
After the Mpati Report was made public, SIH engaged respected former Judge, advocate Willem Heath to review the report’s findings. Heath, has firmly pointed out that the AYO transaction was above board.
The Mpati Report has now been taken on review in the high court.
The only person who has opposed that this report being formally reviewed, is President Cyril Ramaphosa, who put the whole thing together and who, with his minister Pravin Gordhan, have been central in the fight against Survé and Sekunjalo.
Survé and SIH have collectively, through their investment into Independent Media, exposed Ramaphosa’s shortcomings and corruption from the CR17 funds, The PPE scandal and to the now infamous Phala Phalagate – Rampahosa facing impeachment.
It is a fight that Rampahosa and Gordhan cannot afford to lose. Neither can South Africa allow them to win, as the country’s financial future is on the line too.