Technology group 4Sight has appointed Douglas Ramaphosa, the younger brother of President Cyril Ramaphosa, to its board as an independent nonexecutive director from the start of August.
The company, valued at about R139m, said in the brief announcement that Ramaphosa has more than 40 years’ experience in executive management and currently served as the chair of pharmaceutical company BGM Pharmaceuticals and IRCA Proprietary Limited, a training company focusing on safety, health, environment and quality, largely in mining.
He is also on the board of private schooling group Curro, and had a previous stint as independent nonexecutive director of private higher education group Stadio. Other positions in the past included serving as executive at Altron, Transnet, Absa and Anglo American.
Douglas Ramaphosa shot down a question in an interview with Business Times in 2018 about how his appointment to Curro compared to that of Duduzane Zuma’s, son of former president Jacob Zuma, to the board of a Gupta-owned company.
“I don’t see any conflict or problem for me to be on the board of a private company,” he said at the time, when state capture was being uncovered.
“Curro doesn’t have any contracts with [the] government, so we’re not taking government money. Whereas the Guptas were using state-owned enterprises to enrich themselves, Curro is a private school company, which is out there. It does not tender for business from SOEs,” he added.
Ramaphosa joined the ANC when he was 14 and went into exile in 1979. In Botswana, Zambia and Tanzania, he taught history, English and biology at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College.
In 1982 he enrolled at the Rostov State University in Russia, where he majored in political science, history, anthropology and sociology and earned a master’s degree.
4Sight, which has traditionally invested in technology, telecommunication and media sector companies, underwent a dramatic board shake-up in October 2019 that saw the resignation of four directors and the appointment of seven new ones.
The public fight and the suspension of the company from the JSE for late results led to reputational damage, which the new executive team is fighting to repair. The stock tumbled to a low of 16c per share at the time for the AltX-listed company, which is now trading at 26c.
In March, the company reported that its 2022 annual headline earnings per share, a common profit measure in SA that excludes certain items, jumped 35.4% year on year to 2.379c.
With Mudiwa Gavaza
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