Trustee+Baloyi+indifferent,+hopes+fade,+Julian+Rademeyer,+S+Times

Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 04 March 2007
//The real tragedy of the Fidentia scandal is not to be found in its balance sheets or its bottom line, writes// **Julian Rademeyer**//. It is in the mining towns where hopes have been dashed and where corporate greed has translated into misery for widows and orphans. And in the eye of the storm is one of South Africa’s most successful and influential businesswomen.//

=Trustee accused of indifference=



It is in the mining towns where hopes have been dashed and where corporate greed has translated into misery for widows and orphans. And in the eye of the storm is one of South Africa’s most successful and influential businesswomen

AS CHAIRMAN of Fidentia’s black empowerment shareholder, Danisa Baloyi faces damaging accusations of a conflict of interest.

Baloyi is chairman of South African Women Investments and — until recently — a director and trustee of both Living Hands and Fidentia.

In essence, Baloyi is alleged to have failed in her duties as a trustee to protect the beneficiaries of her trust because of her interest in Fidentia.

Her involvement is compounded by allegations that she received an R8-million loan from Fidentia that was being written off at the time curators were appointed.

Baloyi, who effectively owns 10% of Fidentia, has denied that she had a “material conflict of interest” that prevented her from properly looking after the R1.47-billion held in the trust for widows and orphans.

Baloyi, who holds a doctorate in international education and development from Columbia University and later taught at the City University of New York, Essex County College and Rutgers University, is one of South Africa’s most successful and influential businesswomen.

Named Businesswoman of the Year in 2003, she has amassed an impressive business portfolio and is known to have cultivated influential political contacts.

She once reportedly described herself as the “godmother of black economic empowerment laws”.

A member of a heavyweight presidential advisory team on empowerment, Baloyi is a director, shareholder or trustee of numerous companies, trusts and NGOs, including the Road Accident Fund, Absa, Empowerdex, Setpoint Holdings and the Don Group.

But former Fidentia and Living Hands Trust employees have accused her of arrogance and indifference to the plight of the trust’s beneficiaries. One disgruntled former employee described her approach to business as being akin to “a buffalo in high heels”.

Frans Mahlangu, the former executive of the Mineworkers’ Provident Fund who blew the whistle on Fidentia, said although he had not personally dealt with Baloyi, she struck him as a “pompous” person.

“What I got from the employees of Fidentia I used to deal with is that she normally would come to the office and not even greet one of them. She is a person who is not very people-friendly. They said she was quite arrogant.”

Baloyi has maintained her innocence and charged that “someone is out to get me”. On Friday she said : “I think I’m the only South African left who is law-abiding.”

She declined to comment on the Fidentia scandal or the alleged R8-million loan “because this thing is in the courts ... [and] they [her lawyers] tell me if I do that I will upset the judges.”

What many of her critics find most galling is that she initially did not express any concern over the plight of the trust’s beneficiaries.

Pressed for comment about this on Friday she said: “Without a doubt [I’m concerned], but what has happened is that everybody has twisted this story to make it emotionally around the beneficiaries ... I am very, very concerned ... during my trusteeship there has never been a month that they haven’t been paid.”


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=402121**

=Hopes fade for a better life=



Nthabeleng Moqhala’s father died in 2001, his lungs choked with fluid and riddled with scar tissue from 35 years of breathing in dust on Orkney’s mines.

The money from his provident fund was invested in a trust for his daughter, now 20, to give her the opportunity to escape the mining town.

In a year’s time, Moqhala — who has been studying accounting at the Vaal Triangle Technikon — was to have been paid a lump sum of between R60 000 and R100 000.

But now she stands to get nothing.

The Living Hands Investment Trust — administered by Fidentia Asset Management — once supported 47000 widows and orphans, most of them the families of low-income mineworkers.

Now the money is gone; millions allegedly gobbled up in a gluttonous feeding frenzy by Fidentia’s top executives, who used it to support their excesses and glitzy Hollywood lifestyles.

Curators trawling through more than 300 Fidentia-linked accounts in search of the missing millions say the business — which they likened to a pyramid scheme — has cash resources of less than R10-million, and a monthly salary bill of R14-million.

Kanana is a sprawling township situated outside the town of Orkney in North West.

Nameless dirt streets cut a dusty pathway between shacks and state housing-scheme homes.

It exists largely to serve the mines, whose workers harvest unimaginable wealth from gold reefs deep underground.

And it is here and in so many other townships like it that corporate greed, rands, cents, balance sheets and the bottom line have tangibly translated into misery.

Maseabata Kori, 25, effectively became a parent in 2002 when her father died. Her mother had died in 1999. Both succumbed to pulmonary TB.

The responsibility for feeding, clothing and caring for her two younger sisters fell to her. She now works underground at a mine.

Her 19-year-old sister, Malesupi, who also contracted TB, became so ill she dropped out of school.

Her 23-year-old sister, Ntabiseng, sought to escape Kanana’s poverty by becoming pregnant with the child of a mineworker in the hope that he would marry her.

But he abandoned her, leaving her without a cent to raise their four-month-old daughter, Tlotlisang.

When Ntabiseng turned 21, she received R15 000 from the trust.

The sisters used the money to buy a fridge, a wardrobe and a bed for their tiny home.

Malesupi is due to receive more than R26 000 in September next year, but the money has in all likelihood been swallowed up by the Fidentia debacle.

While she was at school, the trust paid her fees.

Now, even if she were to try to return to the classroom, there would be no money for her education.

She has all but given up hope.


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/PrintEdition/News/Article.aspx?id=402122**

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