Last+free+Torque+from+Gleason




 * Gleason Torque, 19 September 2005**

=David Gleason=


 * The emperor’s new clothes**

Why has Stocks Building Africa exercised its builders lien – the right to seize or sell property of a debtor as security – over supposed billionaire Mzi Khumalo’s new hotel development, the Zimbali Cradle Hotel, a jewel in the popular Zimbali Resort?

Stocks Building CEO, Tom Hendry, is just as perplexed. He says that several attempts to resolve the matter with Khumalo have amounted to nought. “The last meeting we had was just another promise of future payments but still nothing on the table,” he says.

Metallon Properties – launched amid pomp and ceremony in May – is attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. Neels Brink surprised the industry when he left Moreland Property, a subsidiary of Tongaat Hullet and teamed up with Khumalo to manage the property division of Metallon Corporation.

At the time, Brink was reported as confident and excited to be working with Khumalo and believed Metallon Properties was well enough capitalised to enable it to identify selected landmark projects.

Further down the KwaZulu Natal Coast in Durban, Metallon Properties has just secured a successful bid to develop the Durban Point area. News obviously travels slower down at the coast.

The bid wasn’t without its fair share of controversy. Khumalo is the chairman of the Durban Point Development Company (DPDC), which is developing the city’s Waterfront, commonly known as the Point Development.

The DPDC is a joint venture between the eThekwini Municipality, through the Durban Infrastructural Development Trust and Rocpoint – a joint venture between Malaysian conglomerate Renong which holds 51% and black business group Vulindlela Holdings (previously a shelf company, Secprop 60).

Moreland and, more importantly, Neels Brink, previously managed the project on behalf of shareholders Rocpoint and eThekwini municipality.

Brink, who led the Metallon bid, is intimately involved through his previous role at Moreland. In retrospect, it is clear it was the sudden appearance of Brink at Metallon Properties’ helm that must have been the deciding factor in ensuring it waltzed off with the management contract.

Khumalo approached the board of the DPDC about the obvious conflict and offered to step down. This was a neatly constructed diversion – in fact, the conflict had long since been engineered. Khumalo and Brink enjoyed an intimate relationship and Khumalo knew very well that, by securing Brink’s involvement at Metallon, his company could hardly fail to collect the DPDC contract further down the line.

This looks for all the world what it is – a dirty little two step.

eThekwini city manager, Mike Sutcliffe, who has either chosen a Nelsonian tactic or is pathetically gullible, says the board is examining the potential conflict but seems persuaded by Khumalo’s “honesty.” After all, says Sutcliffe, it was Khumalo who first raised the issue and, in any event, he considers Khumalo “innocent until proven guilty.”

It seems those who should be sharpest in safeguarding public money are choosing to see only Khumalo’s smart new clothes while he is actually parading around – as the Zimbali parallel suggests – in the buff.

And it doesn’t end there. Khumalo is gearing up to float his largest asset, Metallon Gold, on the JSE. It is certainly intriguing to note that Metallon Gold's newly appointed company secretary has just resigned for being undermined by executive management.

In addition, inside sources say the relationship between Greg Hunter, MD of Metallon Gold and Collen Gura, the CEO of Independence Gold Mining in Zimbabwe, is strained at best.

Red lights are flashing in this cockpit.


 * La luta continua – or will it?**

It should now be clear that battle lines have been drawn inside the SABC. Its new CEO, Dali Mpofu, has been quick to understand that his opponents in what seems to be his design to recreate a truly public broadcaster are those who sit next to him around the board table.

The first casualty of this war of attrition was Paul Setsetse, the SABC’s official spokesman. He was first suspended and then jumped before he was pushed. Setsetse lied to the press when he attempted to cover-up the broadcaster’s failure to report truthfully and fairly. What we actually got at the time was a blackout, one that, for once, prompted universal outrage.

Of course, I have had a number of disputes with Setsetse in recent months. On one occasion he suggested, in a diatribe published in Business Day, that I should be put out to pasture.

The cause then was that I had dared to suggest that SABC chairman Eddie Funde and fellow directors were interfering in the broadcaster’s day-to-day management. Setsetse insisted then that there was no basis in fact for this allegation.

What do we now find? Well, that in defending the SABC’s blackout of the humiliation handed out to deputy president Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka, he had pandered to the whim of non-executive director Noluthanda Goba, one of Funde’s over-zealous acolytes.

So Setsetse has become the latest victim of the interference he so vehemently denied. Mind you, he was only doing what is required of a loyal party hack.

The question now is whom will Mpofu appoint to replace him? A professional with the SABC’s best interests at heart or another apparatchik? You can bet your bottom dollar that news boss Commissar Snuki Zikalala (PhD, Bulgaria) is schmoozing his way around Luthuli House as I write, to secure a tame appointment.

Much will now depend on how Mpofu acts on what may seem a minor issue but which will, in fact, establish the ground rules for the rest of his tenure.


 * Fabcos gives BEE wings**

Last week, Fabcos, the black business chamber, launched its latest initiative – Fabcos Enterprises.

For observers, this has been a fascinating recovery story. Only two years ago, Fabcos looked as though it was about to disappear, unsung and unheralded, down the insolvency tubes. It carried a mountain of debt and a major stake in the failing Premier Foods business.

Since then it has risen from the ashes, its finances restructured, its debts repaid, its ownership of Premier converted into control over a rapidly burgeoning and increasingly profitable food manufacturing and distribution business.

Fabcos’s recent purchase of total ownership of Premier has prompted a heated exchange between it and investment company Johnnic, which launched an action recently to derail the acquisition. Johnnic is involved in a survival struggle with Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) for control of the Tsogo gaming and leisure group and is contesting the sale by Fabcos of part of its stake in Tsogo to HCI.

Approached for comment, a Fabcos spokesman responded that “there is a small minority of white-controlled organisations that will always attempt to derail broad-based empowerment initiatives but they will find themselves isolated from the real business imperatives. We are unperturbed by Johnnic’s spurious efforts to attack us as part of its strategy to vest “white” control over Tsogo.”

Unveiling Fabcos Enterprises to a large and influential audience in Alexandra township, Fabcos’s chief policy adviser, Mxolisi Zwane, also revealed a number of parallel initiatives which include:


 * An Entrepreneurship Institute that has already certificated the completion by 210 members of a business development programme;


 * The launch of FabChannel, a franchise-type distribution network that involves the redesign of spazas and collective price bargaining for members. Zwane quoted one member with two shops whose turnover since becoming part of the FabChannel chain has increased from

R350 000 a month to better than R1,6m with higher margins while offering lower prices to customers. The FabChannel programme is now being rolled out in all nine provinces;


 * The formation of a corporatisation programme designed to improve support services to members across the country, and the launch of Fabcos Distribution Services to involve members at grass root levels

Fabcos, says Zwane, is keen to enter joint ventures but will stay away from the 5% or 10% stakes offered by some corporates whose primary objective is merely to comply with sector charter requirements. Instead, it is looking either for roles as a controlling shareholder or where it can play a meaningful role in the transformation process.


 * And another thing…**

Is there really a conspiracy inside the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to prevent Jacob Zuma from becoming its next president (and, by extension, the country’s too)?

President Thabo Mbeki says he doesn’t know of one but, even if there is, he is not involved. And I have been reading acres of columns in recent days in which learned and knowledgeable observers say no, there is no conspiracy.

We will probably never get to the truth but, and as I observed a few weeks ago, if it helps at all, the ANC may as well go the route of Mbeki’s suggestion to hold a commission of inquiry. I remain, however adamantly opposed to any such inquiry being held in camera.

The argument, adumbrated by Mbeki himself, is that an inquiry behind closed doors will encourage many, who might otherwise be afraid, to speak out. But the converse is equally apposite – safety and security are best served by openness. Evidence given in the glare of publicity delivers as much of a safeguard as anything and physical attacks on those who do give evidence will absolutely confirm the existence of a conspiracy so many think does not exist.

Silence and mystery in the pursuit of truth in a country that claims to embrace transparency makes no sense.

I have said this before and feel it must be said again – the argument about the succession in the ANC is concerned with what happens post-Mbeki. It is not about Mbeki’s tenure. That’s for history to judge.

And I have little doubt that there are many groupings inside the party who do not want Zuma to be successful. They will be (are) trying to make sure Zuma and his supporters fail. Whether that adds up to a conspiracy is conjecture right now.

What no one has asked until now is what has been the role, if any, of those who might be described as representing the left-overs of the “old order” security apparatus? I am not persuaded that they have simply packed their tents and fled into the night. What aid and comfort have men such as Basie Smit, Krappies Engelbrecht, George Fivaz (who is now comfortably ensconced in a forensic investigation grouping with that upholder of constitutional rights, Bulelani Ngcuka) and others provided as “consultants” to whomever?

If we are lucky (but don’t hold your breath), the answers might be provided by a formal, open, inquiry – and it is this to which the alliance partners, the SACP and Cosatu, should be turning their attention.


 * From: http://www.gleasontorque.com/gleasonTorque.co.za/ArticleDetails.aspx?ArID=167