ActionSA has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to institute an investigation into Resolve Communications following allegations that the public relations firm lobbied Democratic Alliance (DA) ministers on behalf of corporate clients.
The call was made in an open letter published on Wednesday by ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont and addressed to former DA leader Tony Leon, who is the executive chairperson at Resolve Communications.
In the letter, Beaumont said the allegations surrounding the firm warranted a formal investigation.
“As a matter of fact, what is beginning to emerge resembles, in my opinion, a state capture racket and this is why ActionSA has called on the President to institute an investigation into the actions of Resolve Communications,” Beaumont wrote.
He also challenged Leon to pursue legal action against ActionSA. “Please issue the papers, Tony. We would love to get those people on the record under oath and see just how transparent you really want to be.”
Beaumont’s letter follows allegations made by former DA leader John Steenhuisen about Resolve Communications’ engagements with members of the executive.
In an interview with News24, Steenhuisen said Resolve Communications had regularly approached him during his time in office to arrange meetings with corporate clients represented by the firm.
Steenhuisen said he was “quite shocked” to later discover that organisations represented by Resolve were among those calling for his removal from Cabinet.
“Resolve had regularly approached me as a minister to meet with their clients and to try and assist their clients with issues and problems or policy changes that they would like to see,” Steenhuisen said.
Referring to reports involving Communications Minister Solly Malatsi and Starlink, Beaumont said Resolve Communications had engaged the minister on behalf of the satellite internet company.
“Reports have now emerged from the former DA Leader that Resolve Communications engaged the DA Minister of Communications, Solly Malatsi, on behalf of Elon Musk’s Starlink,” Beaumont wrote.
He said this was followed by Malatsi’s publication of proposed equity equivalent measures for the telecommunications sector.
“The same former DA Leader confirmed that he met with Starlink at the urging of Resolve Communications, during which meeting Starlink representatives, according to the DA former leader’s account, complained to him about the slow pace of work done by Malatsi.
“Are we really expected to believe that this meeting was not intentionally set up with Solly Malatsi’s then party leader, the person who appointed him to the position of Communications Minister with the specific intent of bringing undue pressure to bear on Malatsi to act in Starlink’s interests?”
Beaumont also referred to allegations made by Steenhuisen, as the former agriculture minister.
“The same former DA Minister of Agriculture has alleged that Resolve Communications engaged him to take meetings with clients of Resolve Communications and, curiously, at no point did he deny that such meetings took place,” Beaumont wrote.
He added Steenhuisen had alleged that Resolve Communications represented organisations that later pressured for his removal from Cabinet.
“So now, to the ability to influence, we add the dimension of Resolve Communications being instrumental in the firing of Ministers. Does that ring a bell (Pottinger) Tony?”
Beaumont also cited allegations by former forestry, fisheries and the environment minister Dion George.
“Yesterday, the DA’s former Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment confirmed that Resolve Communications repeatedly pressured him to meet with clients of Resolve Communications, even while those clients were engaged in litigation against the department,” Beaumont wrote.
According to Beaumont, George also said he believed the campaign to remove him was backed by Resolve Communications.
Beaumont further referred to an earlier meeting involving ActionSA president Herman Mashaba during Mashaba’s tenure as executive mayor of Johannesburg.
“We already published the story of you setting up a meeting with Herman Mashaba, when he was Mayor of Joburg in 2019, under the false pretence of discussing matters pertaining to the party,” Beaumont wrote.
He alleged that Leon used the meeting to advocate for a client seeking a R300 million municipal contract. “Mashaba kicked you out of his house but you sure got him back when you chaired the DA’s FedEx-appointed committee reviewing the party’s governments in the wake of the DA’s poor electoral showing and chose to blame Mashaba’s government, in part, for that showing”.
Beaumont said ActionSA would pursue the matter through parliament.
“ActionSA has engaged the President to convene an urgent investigation into this matter.
“We are issuing parliamentary questions to all DA Ministers and Deputy Ministers to learn the nature of these engagements.”
He said the party would also call for Malatsi to appear before parliament’s portfolio committee on communications and digital technologies and would ask the committee to summon Resolve Communications to answer questions about its engagements.
Leon, as chairperson of Resolve Communications, has rejected allegations that Resolve Communications acted improperly or had intentions to capture the state.
In a statement issued earlier, he said Resolve Communications operated as a corporate public affairs firm and that engagement between companies and the government was a legitimate part of the policymaking process.
He also denied that the firm exercised improper influence over ministers and indicated that legal action was being considered over allegations made against the company.
“I want to be especially clear on one point because it goes to the heart of these insinuations. We do not and we cannot direct the decisions of ministers or officials. We have never sought to.
“Where we have requested a meeting on a client’s behalf and that request has been declined, we have respected the decision without complaint. A request, made and freely refused, is not corruption.”
To suggest otherwise, Leon asserted, was to misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent how an open society works.
“The comparison to state capture is the part I find most objectionable and I say so as someone who fought this scourge in various forms from the opposition benches since the advent of South Africa’s hard fought democracy. State capture was the criminal subversion of public institutions for private enrichment, conducted in secret and in defiance of the law.
“The work of helping a lawful business make its case to government, in the open and on the record, is its precise opposite. To conflate the two is not merely inaccurate. It is an insult to the South Africans who suffered under the real thing and who fought to bring it to light.”
The allegations have surfaced in the midst of political contests in which Resolve plays no part, he said. The firm had become “a convenient external explanation for difficulties that are, in truth, internal and political.
“I have seen this pattern before. An identical claim was made against me and our firm in 2019, in the heat of a party dispute; it was untrue then, no charge ever followed and it is no truer for being revived now.”