04 December 2020

Letter to Minister, Comrade: Mukhomiwa Timali

Submitted by: Archy Hlahla

Minister of Finance

Mr. Tito Mboweni

May I take this opportunity to openly pen my disappointment in your utterances at the briefing by the National Treasury and Public Investment Corporation (PIC) on the Mpati Commission of Inquiry Report this past Wednesday, the 2nd of December 2020, at which I was instructed not to participate in but observe in awe.

To say I am extremely disappointed by your comments, will be an understatement.

I’d like to quote you: “ There was a product created between the PIC and a private Banking entity, someone at the PIC said let’s go find a BEE partner and split the 50% that belonged to the PIC, so that Standard Bank (sounded like a mistake mentioning the name, coughing “oh dear”) would hold 50% and the PIC would split its 50% with this black partner (sounding shocked at blacks).Very unbelievable that the PIC representative says, “I need a finder’s fee because I found you a black partner” and some amount of about R45 million rand or so is mentioned. Then this bank says “no, there is something funny going on here, we will think about it”. As the bank is thinking about it, Maponya is selected, who is this Maponya fellow? “I’m the one who has been found, I need the money, you should pay me for finding me” this is where this court case is going. This is unbelievable, it’s the kind of stuff found in movies; anyway, please proceed before I get myself into trouble “end quote.

Minister, it now shows that you didn’t bother to read my submission to the commission before making your unfortunate comments and therefore, in my view, you have taken a deliberate decision to stand with the section of the public officials which has decided to ignore true facts in favor of fiction. Not to mention that all these things you said were not factual, disrespectful, and devoid of truth.

Having swallowed a narrative from the bank, you mistakenly mentioned that they could never back up and repeatedly refused my call for a forensic investigation at the company to prove their claims and disprove mine.

Even on the day, they went to the commission in the morning, the bank refused a request for a forensic investigation into the very claims they made, and subsequently the auditors Deloitte withdrew their report of hearsay and claimed to not have had any requirements to investigate but report allegations as fact. They have since been removed as auditors.

Mr. Abel Sithole presented a slide that showed that their application to have my claim dismissed was thrown out with costs and they have since filed an appeal.

Minister, you have failed to mention this fact, among the many things the PIC is applying as delaying tactics and duplicate processes to avoid getting to the core of the matter!

I reserved the last of whatever respect I still had for you my dear older brother. For you to address me as “This Fellow” to the gallery was extremely low, even by the standards of value you carry for your African brothers.

I am one of the people who never abandoned you nor heeded the warnings about your personality when you cut a lonely figure after your tenure as governor of the reserve bank because my family loved you so much, especially my father, who would give anything in the world for you. From your time at the University of The North to Exile and back.

I looked up to you as an older brother and defended your European perspective and views even though I did not agree with many of them because I respected you and most of all respected my father’s choices, which would include whatever he saw in you. I believed and still believe he had the talent to spot potential, mostly where most of us could not.

What pains me worst, is the fact that you, like your unilaterally and illegally appointed PIC Chair, who tried and continues to muscle me out of my stake in SAHL never wanted to listen to me and apply yourselves to my principled and unambiguous claim, but go about grandstanding your claims of wrongdoing and criminality as if you didn’t break bread in our house so many times and even buried my father. This is disgusting in our culture as Africans.

The fact that when I appealed to you for an ear and intervention, you sent a man accused of fraud to acquire my shares is as appalling as you have introduced me to a con-woman, who fleeced me, my family, and many other comrades.

She is in prison as we speak, and I have always wondered how you could have missed that information as the governor of the reserve bank with so much intelligence at your disposal until recently. Your diligence and ability to interrogate and apply yourself independently is absent.

As to the matter of the Mpati Report that you choose to read selectively and manipulate, let me help you understand it and perhaps avoid further embarrassment.

The commissioner was very clear in dismissing evidence about me and transactions relating to me when he gave reasons why he never called me to testify as those matters did not fall within the ambit of the commission and he could not help the fact that those people were given an opportunity by those operating in a sinister fashion within his commission.

He explained to my legal team that allowing further discussion and counter-argument would only muddy the waters further as we had correctly placed our matter with the correct court.

Judge Mpati went on to further clarify the parameters of his mandate and recommended that based on the allegations placed before him, even though they were matters that did not concern him, “The PIC should conduct investigations into the role played by their employees and especially Masekesa when it came to the Bribe Allegations “.

Even though I have written to them and the Standing Committee about my not having access to the investigation report, I can in good authority tell you that the investigation reported the allegations as hearsay.

I can further inform you that they were then instructed to go back and come with legal opinions and not findings, to bolster the efforts of the PIC to continue fighting with me and recommend that they ignore the legal case in front of the courts and pursue an unfounded order to declare me as a delinquent director for standing up to them.

You displayed the outmost level of arrogance in that meeting as displayed by the PIC chairman in previous statements to the media by declaring my claim as wrong, even though a court is yet to rule on it.

This and all deliberate misinterpretation of Judge Mpati shows your utter level of disrespect for our courts and Honorable Justices as previously displayed by your tin fish-eating partner, whose wife you appointed to the PIC board without flinching on the conflict and her past record of success.

I expressed my opinion on this, and you stopped taking my calls. Perhaps you should be open and explain that you don’t like to be debated and you regard disagreeing with you as a cardinal sin and hence I’m being stripped naked and being called, “This Fellow”

You are complacent in destroying a businessman, his business, his family, and the people that work for him and those that could potentially work for him in the future directly and indirectly. Yet you claim that you want economic growth.

What about all the other projects of mine being scuppered by the PIC? Did I steal or try to steal from all of them?

At the end of the session, you completely flip and sensibly and correctly request the PIC to stop mentioning Ayo and affecting its performance and employees. You ask that they convene Dr Surve and sort out the matter.

Not to be cynical nor give a wrong impression, Ayo was in fact covered within the mandate of the commission and I was not, you do not apply the same principles with my matter after having done the complete opposite. Do you see me as chicken feet?

Please be honest with yourself.

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This Letter was submitted by Archy Hlahla, Hlengani & Associates on behalf of (writer) Mr. Kholofelo Sekepe Maponya.