Banks will provide finance to an empowerment consortium with close links to the African National Congress that is to buy a 15,1% stake in Telkom for R6-billion, the party confirmed on Wednesday.
”The banks are funding it. I cannot disclose which banks,” said Smuts Ngonyama, head of the Presidency in the ANC, who is in the consortium.
Andile Ngcaba, former director general of communications, who is also in the consortium, said further details of the transaction will be released next week after the deal is closed.
The deal has drawn criticism from opposition parties and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille said: ”Obviously these people in their personal capacity do have the right to be in consortiums, but we expected that in a Telkom deal the poor would benefit.
”The exercise of selling off parastatals has been the transfer of wealth from one elite to another,” she said, adding that a new layer of millionaires and billionaires is being created, and the poor excluded. — Sapa