It’s the radio interview everyone is talking about: a gasping Atul Gupta‚ Mr State Capture himself‚ goes on air at the BBC and says he believes all is well back in his land of milk and honey.
He also tells the station that the leaked Gupta e-mails are fake and that he believes disgraced spin doctors Bell Pottinger are a "credible" company.
Atul must be suffering a bit of Dubai sunstroke to believe a word of it.
But the bizarreness doesn’t end there.
James Henderson‚ the CEO of Bell Pottinger‚ the British public relations company accused of stirring racial tension in SA‚ told the BBC he believed that his team who worked on the Gupta family account had acted with the best intentions.
This is a far cry from the "apology" Henderson issued recently when he also announced the firing of the Bell Pottinger Gupta account manager.
"At worst we were very naïve with what we got involved in‚" Henderson told BBC Radio 4.
"There was certainly no intention of collaborating with corruption. We were trying to do a good job for a client in managing their reputation and defending them from a number of accusations."
The evidence‚ however‚ makes this statement appear naïve at best and‚ at worst‚ a downright lie.
Let us debunk the claims in this interview.
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Claim: The leaked e-mails are fake.
Atul Gupta: "Let’s talk Gupta leaks; there is no authenticity of Gupta leaks at all. They are all everyday deception-mongering to drive their own agenda."
The evidence: Not true: at least four of SA’s top politicians and two more bureaucrats have confirmed the veracity of the e-mails. One example is Lakela Kaunda‚ a senior official in President Jacob Zuma’s office. She confirmed to the Sunday Times that she had sent one of the e-mails in the leaked mother lode that the newspaper had identified. The President’s former private secretary also confirmed her e-mails, which are contained in the leaks.
The writer of this article has personally interviewed at least two other people who have verified a string of e-mails. One was even able to show them in his mailbox on his iPad.
Claim: We don’t know where the white monopoly capital narrative comes from.
Atul Gupta: "I don’t know what is this narrative come from [sic]. White monopoly capital‚ if you go research any revolutionary speech in this country‚ always exist. I don’t know where this term comes from‚ believe me."
The evidence: Correspondence between Bell Pottinger’s Victoria Geoghegan and Zuma’s son‚ Duduzane Zuma‚ who is heavily involved in Gupta business dealings‚ shows that this statement is not true‚ either.
Duduzane Zuma writes to Geoghegan‚ and requests assistance "in designing and creating a hard-hitting message along the lines of the #EconomicEmancipation or whatever it is".
He sent this message to Tony Gupta too.
Suddenly‚ we are to believe the term "white monopoly capital" sprang forth coincidentally from the depths of Twitter and on pro-Gupta‚ pro-Zuma websites.
Andile Mnxgitama, of the Black First Land First organisation, was reborn with new purpose.
Henderson himself implied that Bell Pottinger was part of it. "There wasn’t an intention to play with race; there was an intention to highlight a very real issue."
But it is the words of Lord Tim Bell‚ former chairperson of Bell Pottinger‚ that really nail the coffin shut on this one.
Bell said during the first meeting with Tony Gupta that there was never any discussion about doing any PR for Gupta’s company‚ Oakbay. It was for the Guptas directly.
"The conversation became quite clear that he felt he was stopped from doing things because he was the wrong colour and white people only could raise money in SA‚" Bell said.
"That’s why I think he wanted a campaign for economic emancipation because I think he wanted to improve the position of his company and to down the opposition.
"We didn’t talk about what we would do at that first meeting; we went away and made a proposal and the proposal suggested that we would do various things including organise people to march, to give a demonstration, to make a fuss about the fact that they had got the vote in 1994 but they hadn’t got economic power."
The leaked e-mails echo this quite clearly.
• Cowan is one of the team of Tiso Blackstar journalists who have been reporting on the Gupta e-mails leak
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