Mungo Soggot
Don Mkhwanazi, the former chair of the Central Energy Fund who quit after the last state oil scandal, is suing the Mail & Guardian for R3- million for articles published three years ago. Mkhwanazi who made the three-year suing period allowed for such actions by a matter of days has homed in on an article entitled “What was in it for Don” and an entry in the Krisjan Lemmer column describing him as a “well-known crook about town”.
The article explored Mkhwanazi’s financial links with Emanuel Shaw II, a Liberian politician and financier, who was a business associate of Mkhwanazi before he was hired at the state oil company on a R3-million- a-year contract.
Shaw sued the M&G for R7-million after a series of articles on his stint at the state oil company and on his corrupt past in Liberia. He never pitched at the trial, and returned to Liberia to work in the government of President Charles Taylor without paying the M&G’s R120 000 costs. The article Mkhwanazi is gunning for described how he and Shaw shared a bank account which paid mortgage instalments on Mkhwanazi’s luxury Johannesburg home.
Officials at the state oil company were not informed of Mkhwanazi’s close association with Shaw before signing him up as a consultant. Mkhwanazi has also been a business associate of Ethelbert Cooper, a Liberian who worked with Shaw, and who assisted Mkhwanazi at his Malaysian-backed Southern Bank of Africa. Mkhwanazi was formerly a leading light in the African National Congress, and served as an economic adviser to Thabo Mbeki. Since the oil scandal, he has kept a low profile.
Mkhwanazi resigned as chair of the state oil company in April 1998 citing a campaign of innuendo and malice by the M&G. He was replaced by his business associate and deputy central energy fund chair, Keith Kunene, the man who was fired in December for his role in this week’s bribe scandal.