The former director-general of the department of mineral resources says he unwittingly played a role in the takeover of Eskom coal supplier Optimum colliery by the Gupta family, outmuscling Glencore.
Thibedi Ramontja, who had served the department for 19 years, told the commission of inquiry into state capture on Thursday that he had been sidelined by then minister Mosebenzi Zwane and his three advisers, who created a "misty environment" in which he was excluded from key decisions.
Optimum has been at the centre of state capture allegations since former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s 2016 report detailed how, under the tenure of former president Jacob Zuma, Eskom officials forced the sale of Optimum by Glencore and then helped the politically connected Gupta family to buy the company.
Ramontja became highly animated when explaining to judge Raymond Zondo, the commission’s chair, how Zwane and those closest to him had "centralised" the Optimum colliery matters in the minister’s office, leaving him in the dark.
He said Zwane’s advisers would take over his role in the department, relaying instructions to staff directly.
Zwane had a history with the Guptas at the Estina dairy project in the Free State dating back to 2012, which was defrauded of R144m. The Gupta family, friends of Zuma and business partners of his son, and their associates were named in an indictment as beneficiaries. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) eventually dropped that case in November 2018.
At the heart of Ramontja’s testimony on Thursday, there was a letter he had signed in response to Eskom executive Matshela Koko on December 6 2015, around the purchase of the Optimum colliery by the Guptas’ Tegeta Resources company.
The letter came just days after Zwane had visited Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg in Switzerland with Tony Gupta and his associate Sallim Essa, persuading the boss of the world’s largest commodity trader to change the company’s plans of taking Optimum out of business rescue and recapitalising it, and instead sell it to the Guptas.
Ramontja said Koko’s letter had prompted a written response that had "appeared in his inbox". He had perused it and signed it, but had not dated it because he wanted to revisit the contents.
Then the response he had signed disappeared only to resurface at a parliamentary hearing. There it was presented by Eskom executives who used it to justify their actions around the hundreds of millions of rand prepaid to Tegeta by the utility and which was used to fund the purchase of the colliery.
Zondo repeatedly came back to the point that Ramontja had done absolutely nothing about the mysterious arrival of a
letter written by an unknown third party, which he had signed and which had then just as mysteriously disappeared.
On Ramontja’s testimony, the judge said he had been hopelessly naïve in the toxic environment created by Zwane and his advisers. He took at face value the letter from Koko, which urged the department to intervene in the sale of Optimum to Tegeta. Ramontja had not interrogated the author or the intention, nor the whereabouts of the reply he had signed.
"In hindsight, one could have done better. One could have been vigilant. But sometimes, you never expect that people can use a government system for their own ulterior motives," Ramontja said.
The letter set out how the minister would expedite the transfer of mining rights to Tegeta, Ramontja said, and that the department would approach the competition commission to urgently process the transaction.
These were key factors that Tegeta could use to raise capital to fund the R2.1bn purchase of Optimum or secure Eskom approval of the deal.
Ramontja’s testimony also included an intriguing insight into the spate of temporary stoppages at mines, ordered by the department during Zwane’s tenure, giving credence to claims at the time that these actions could be used as weapons against mining companies.
Ramontja said the chief inspector of mines had at the time told him that the advisers had told officials which mines to investigate — something neither he nor previous ministers had dared to do.
One example was Royal Bafokeng Platinum, which underwent a string of safety stoppages after it stopped the services of JIC, a mining contractor linked to the Guptas.
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