The usual Western Cape black economic empowerment (BEE) beneficiaries were left in the cold as the Cape Town council selected new blood in its second shot at its empowerment transaction of prime beachfront land at Big Bay, Bloubergstrand.
In all, 17 parcels of land, mostly sized between 2 400m2 and 2 600m2 have been sold at prices ranging from R2,7-million to R3,4-million.
The council is set to make about R9-million more out of the deal than in the first controversial and ultimately abandoned award to hand-picked entities, including three companies linked to the African National Congress or its youth league — as the Mail & Guardian disclosed (“Big Bay deal reversed”, February 18).
After a forensic audit revealed irregularities in how these companies were selected, the initial allocations were scrapped and the tender process to sell the council-owned land at Bloubergstrand was restarted in April.
Among the succesful 17 are a corporate executive looking for a “private property investment”, an emerging BEE company, a consortium of women led by ANC women’s rights activist Buyiswa Jack and an employee of Parliament’s public education unit.
Out are the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) members Andile Nkuhlu and Lunga Ncwana, whose company Itsuseng Strategic Investment had been picked in the first round, which was scrapped in February. Also out is another of the initial beneficiaries, Sharif Pandor, husband of Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor.
Lembede Properties, majority-owned by the ANCYL investment arm Lembede Investment Holdings, did not make a second bid when the process re-started in May.
Previously, Pandor and Ncwana were involved in the R323-million acquisition of the historic Boschendal winery from Anglo American Farms by an overseas consortium whose 30% domestic BEE component was led by ex-ANC Western Cape leader Chris Nissen.
Nissen and Pandor late last year teamed up again as shareholders in the fisheries empowerment firm, South Atlantic Fishing Company (Safoc).
Council documents on the Big Bay empowerment deal released this week show that bids by Pandor’s Freidshelf 475 and Itsuseng Strategic Investments came in at, or marginally above, reserve prices. In contrast the successful bidders made offers of more than R500 000 on top of the minimum figure.
Among the losers are several well-known black Cape business people, such as Patrick Parring and Monde Mbeta. Also unsuccessful was Shantaal Meter, MD of Bluefin Holdings, the BEE fishing company she established in Hout Bay where her husband was a councillor in the late 1990s.
The only beneficiary to have been successful in this as well as the first round is Trymore, owned by Thembinkosi Mpoyiya.