The ANC Billionaires: Big Capital's Gambit and the Rise of the Few

Front Cover
Jonathan Ball Publishers, Oct 31, 2022 - Political Science - 256 pages
'We were talking about the rise of Japan, about Ronald Reagan's Star Wars ... globalisation, technology. And they were still banging on about the Freedom Charter.' – Anglo American's Michael Spicer on the ANC in the mid-1980s. In 1985, a group of white South African business leaders, led by Gavin Relly, the executive chairperson of Anglo American, travelled to a game lodge in Zambia to meet with the exiled ANC leadership under Oliver Tambo and Thabo Mbeki. This visit set in motion a coordinated and well-resourced plan by big business to influence and direct political change in South Africa. In The ANC Billionaires, top-selling author Pieter du Toit draws on first-hand accounts by major roleplayers about the contentious relationship between capital and the ANC before, during and after the country's transition to democracy, and shows how the liberation organisation was completely unprepared to navigate the intersection between business and politics. He also ties the rise of the new elite – including Cyril Ramaphosa, Patrice Motsepe and Saki Macozoma – to the ANC, a party of government and patronage.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Acronyms and abbreviations
The long road to Lusaka
South Africa burning
Not crossing the Rubicon
MarxistLeninists and fears about the
Big capital starts planning the future
Reform accelerates
Return from exile
HARVEST 1996 to present day
The origin story of the ANC billionaires
Cyril Ramaphosa
Vusi Khanyile
Saki Macozoma
Patrice Motsepe
Conclusion
References

Capitalists and comrades
Brenthurst and meeting Oppenheimer
Living in the real world
Ready to govern
The left loses its lustre
Betrayal and the end of the
The new South Africa accepts new rules
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Imprint page
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2022)

PIETER DU TOIT is an award-winning journalist and assistant editor at News24. He is the author of the best-selling The Stellenbosch Mafia (2019) and the co-author of Enemy of the People (2017), with Adriaan Basson. Pieter is a former editor of HuffPost South Africa and news editor of Beeld and Netwerk24.

Bibliographic information