Saturday Star
*Putting on a positive spin* *Janet Smith, Saturday Star, Johannesburg, 31 July 2010*ATUL GUPTA walks in a bit stiffly. It’s a dreadful boardroom. Too hot and too dark. The weird blue of the walls too cloying. The blinds are down and there are no windows open. Not that there’s much to see outside.
These are the spartan offices of Sahara Computers and Essop Pahad’s political journal, The Thinker. They’re in a small, quite empty space behind the AA offices in a dull corporate park off the old Pretoria Road. Not far away is the morning-after-the-night-before shabbiness of Lolly Jackson’s Teazers, loafing under the concrete overpass.
Founder of the multi-million-rand Sahara Group, IT industrialist Gupta shakes our hands in a serious manner, revealing the slash of red string around his wrist for Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity. Behind him is Vuyo Mvoko, the editor of the Gupta family’s first newspaper, The New Age.
Wearing a patterned shirt and a black waistcoat, Mvoko looks nothing like most other young editors of his era in their uniform of open-necked lilac shirts and comfort-fit trousers.
Gupta seems slightly anxious, but he introduces Mvoko with some warmth. The editor could, after all, be seen as one of a few ironies of this moment. His job is going to be to warm the egg in his hands.
The Guptas want positive news from around the country, and it is that word “positive” that has been responsible for the flinch many journalists felt when they heard that The New Age was going ahead. confides his family’s “deep hurt” at now being targeted as Zuma benefactors when all they really want to do is contribute to the economy and enjoy their life in a new country.
“In all those years before, nobody touched my family, but now that we are getting into the media, now they want to kill my family, especially my mother. I say, let’s be open. Let’s discuss. Let’s sit with all authenticated documents (alleging support for the ruling party and the president). This is very disappointing to me. It is my frustration.
“These are manufactured personal attacks. We believe there is a hidden agenda behind it. I say, why are creative people being attacked? Our mindset (as a family) is to be independent. We are resourceful and we ask, why can’t we do it? We have the best infrastructure in this country. Why can’t we be compared to the way business works in Asian countries? That’s my angle.”
Gupta volunteers the fact that the Zuma family are “indeed household friends”. He’s game to take on aspersions that his family supplied the president with a spot at the Saxonwold pile and the cost of a plane for ANC campaigning last year.
There was also a view that Zuma spent too much time with Rajesh and Ajay Gupta during his state visit to India earlier this year, the two being part of a 200-strong South African business delegation, Ajay speaking for Sahara and Rajesh for Mvengela, the Guptas’ uranium mining company, which has Zuma’s son Duduzane as one of its directors.
That plane to India included magnate Lazarus Zim, the Kumba Iron Ore chairman, who has put his considerable name behind The New Age.
Africa Rainbow Minerals chief executive Patrice Motsepe – who Gupta calls “a friend”, along with “Tokyo Sexwale and the Oppenheimers” – was in the India delegation too, driving the relaunch of the India-South Africa CEOs Forum.
Gupta is keen to speak about his family’s friendships, and this elicits another apparent irony concerning the New Age and its editorial adviser Pahad, who was Mbeki’s minister in the Presidency.
The general factotum on The Thinker, Pahad was one of the first ministers to quit when Mbeki was ousted in September 2008, and is not regarded as a fence-sitter on the subject of the former president.
Duarte’s version of the February gathering at the Saxonwold mansion resonates. Many were taken aback that there seemed to be such easy détente – not so much from the side of Luthuli House as from Pahad’s side. Yet it is true that before the Gupta brothers signed the magazine deal with Pahad, they were already close to Zuma.
The best description of Gupta is that he has successfully crossed the Polokwane divide.
“I know I am clean,” he says.“I would like anyone to show I have taken one cent or used an unfair advantage. I can clarify every point. I have full justification. On the issue of (favouring) the Zumas, we have 8 000 employees, among them two Zumas (Duduzane’s sister Duduzile is a Sahara director).”
Mvoko interjects on the point of political interference on The New Age: “When Saki (Macozoma) took over the Sowetan and Tokyo (Sexwale) got involved in Avusa, was there any obvious impact in terms of political influence?”
“I need a team,” Gupta explains. “I will try to take those who are as good as possible to work for me, but again, they (his enemies) nail me. We’ve been working very sensitively on this project for 18 months. We are just trying to do what is best for South Africans. It’s not that easy, but I know that even the numbers will come right.
“But please, let’s be clear. It’s not for the money. This is not a money mission.
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