NEWS that former apartheid financier and bankster, Johann Rupert was ‘donating’ R1 billion to small business relief via the President’s so-called Solidarity fund, raised the ire of many critics who argued that the donation was in fact a loan.
The controversy recalls similar prevarication issued by the Ruperts, especially in regard to the family’s collaboration with the apartheid regime.
Sunday World at first broke the story that the funds would be used as loans not bailouts
Moneyweb soon followed suit, by questioning the publicity stunt, but then decided to fudge the matter somewhat. The devil as they say was in the detail, — what at first appeared to be a massive credit might yet turn out to be a very large debit:
As investment analyst David Morobe explained, the money was in fact a donation to the fund but the “assistance will be in the form of a loan, which is repayable over a period of five years.”
“For the first year, applicants will not have to pay interest or instalments, but thereafter they will be expected to do so.”
The Citizen similarly varied its piece on the subject, but carried word of opposition party the EFF and its open disgust for the manner in which the crisis was being used “entrap” small and medium enterprises in debt. The party even went as far as to accuse the billionaire of trying to be a “loan shark”.
Meanwhile the only person to have ever experienced discrimination at Naspers/Media24 headquarters during apartheid, according to the company, has died. Former Stellenbosch Mayor Conrad Sidego passed away this week bringing a close to a chapter in which he was the sole person to have been affected by apartheid. The Rupert’s iron grip over our legal system, itself designed to give the first round of state capture a massive advantage, has all but stifled legal action in the aftermath of apartheid.
It should strike readers as incredibly odd (or just a tad convenient), that nobody in the media world has found pause to consider that the Rupert’s various investments in the media and capture of the justice system, came about as a result of apartheid — the late Anton Rupert’s close business relationship to Nico Diederichs and Owen Horward, both stanch Nationalists and close confidants of the late PW Botha.