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Lindiwe Sisulu met Gupta-linked Salim Essa’s banking buddy in December Dubai visit

Lindiwe Sisulu met Gupta-linked Salim Essa’s banking buddy in December Dubai visit
Minister of Tourism Lindiwe Sisulu. (Photo: Gallo Images / Foto24 / Lerato Maduna)

Hamza Farooqui claims to have cut ties with Essa and built a tourism empire.

In December 2021, Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu visited the Dubai Expo and met four leading business people including Hamza Farooqui, Salim Essa’s erstwhile business partner.

In 2017 as the big commercial banks each froze the Gupta and Essa family business accounts, Farooqui fronted a bid to get them a banking licence as they sought to export the profits of capture they had amassed rapidly.  The administration of their patron, former president Jacob Zuma, was about to end. 

At the time, the #GuptaLeaks email revealed Farooqui worked with the black ops PR company Bell Pottinger to craft a narrative that the banks were part of the white monopoly capital edifice and that they were green with envy at the growth of the Gupta and Essa networks of influence and money. 

Tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu and Altaaf Kazi, the Head of Corporate Communications and Business Development for the Millat Group.. (Photo: Department of Tourism)

NPA Regiments assets

Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa. (Photo: Supplied)

Farooqui went on television and granted interviews decrying banking apartheid as he fought for the licence as a part of a joint venture company with Essa.  They wanted to buy Habib Overseas Bank, as Jessica Bezuidenhout revealed at the time. 

He says he had cut ties with Essa, who had emerged in the evidence before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry as the person who secured the most money for his various companies in the grand corruption that South Africa calls State Capture. 

In December 2021, Farooqui got a seat at the top table as Sisulu took South Africa’s case to the UAE. In addition to Farooqui, she met Emirates Group chairman Sheik Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum (a member of the Dubai dynasty), with the CEO of the Bin Otaiba Hotels group Khalaf Bin Ahmed Al Otaiba and Farooqui. Farooqui has recently opened two hotels in South Africa, with a third about to cut the ribbon. His Millat Investments has offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Dubai.  

Sisulu was there as part of a line of Cabinet ministers visiting the South African stands at the mega Dubai World Expo – President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected in March. Emirates is one of the few remaining airlines which has not lifted the Omicron travel ban on South Africa because the UAE has not ended it.  

On 26 January, the Department of Tourism issued a statement explaining the trip after journalists raised questions about Sisulu’s meeting with Farooqui.

Sisulu said she met key delegates to growing UAE tourism and investment in South Africa and that Farooqi was part of those meetings. The visit to Dubai was also aimed at amplifying messages that South Africa is a Covid-19-safe destination. Tourist safety, visa waivers, and holiday packages were on the agenda. 

Essa and the Guptas are holed up in Dubai and face an extradition request from South Africa tabled with the UAE government years ago. No progress has been made on that extradition request, and they live the high life in Dubai. 

Farooqui says he is no longer part of the circle. “Mr Farooqui has no business interests with Mr Salim Essa. (He) was in Dubai in December 2021 during Minister Sisulu’s visit to the World Expo. As an investor with keen interest in growing international tourism to South Africa, he met with the Minister. The meeting lasted around 30 minutes and focused on tourism-related matters. The meeting was like others that Minister Sisulu held with investors, airlines, and trade partners during her visit. Mr Farooqui met with other organisations and individuals on the side-lines of the Expo to discuss tourism investment,” said Altaaf Kazi, the Head of Corporate Communications and Business Development for the Millat Group. 

Kazi was Sisulu’s media spokesperson for the Dubai visit in December 2021 because he was serving out his notice with SA Tourism, where he had worked for four years. 

Sisulu was never associated with the Gupta family, even when many South African Cabinet ministers traipsed back and forth to and from their Saxonwold headquarters like minions.

She is running for ANC president at the party’s elective conference pencilled in for December 2022.  

The Guptas and Essa are still deeply engaged in South African politics and covet a return under a different administration, but there is no indication she met them. In all their business forays in India, sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, they have never amassed the rapid and easy fortunes they made in the high era of state capture in South Africa.  

Farooqui’s associates say that he realised his ties to Essa had been harmful. He is the only hotelier who invested and grew employment in South Africa during the Covid pandemic. Premier David Makhura opened his Hyatt House Sandton hotel in December 2021.  

When asked a series of questions about Sisulu’s Dubai visit, her office referred Daily Maverick to a statement released on 25 January stating that the Minister’s visit was aimed at amplifying messages that South Africa is a Covid-19 safe destination.

Reuters reported on Thursday that the UAE is set to lift the entry transit ban on travellers who had recently visited South Africa and 11 other African countries. 

Sisulu has been embroiled in a storm of controversy — both publicly and within the ANC — after penning an article that launched an attack on the judiciary. DM

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Comments - Please in order to comment.

  • Kb1066 . says:

    Some of us have been waiting for months to be able to go to Dubai, how do these people manage to go there and have meetings when restricted

  • Charles Parr says:

    So LS goes to Dubai to discuss issues that she knows nothing about (tourism) and cares even less about it and just happens to hold discussions with some extremely dicey characters. There’s nothing quite like innocence.

  • Memphis Belle says:

    What a lovely and charming lady.

  • Heinrich Holt says:

    She never heard of Teams or Zoom meetings? Especially if they are only 30 minutes long?

  • Wytze Voerman says:

    “News” I can do without: too much innuendo, very thin on facts…. Not good enough!

  • Coen Gous says:

    Ferial, once again a brilliant piece of investigative journalism. Just to remember these names, to spell is, is an amazing feat. LS, like Memphis Belle’s comment, is such a lovely and charming lady. Will do anything to bring in tourism, and help to destroy our constitution, our judiciary, our very existence. Up to very recently my hero in life was Greta Thunberg, but she has now been replaced by Lindiwe Donceba Sisulu. If only we had more like her!

  • Johan Buys says:

    For those considering hotels in JHB and CPT, the ones to choose if you want to support Farooqui are the Hyatt Regency Cape Town in the city centre and Hyatt House in Sandton.

    • Coen Gous says:

      Johan, I presume you need a few bucks…in retirement I prefer the self catering type of establishments, having one myself. But take your word for it…been a while since I have been in the corporate world

    • Charles Parr says:

      Funny that those hotels are doing well. The Hyatt in Rosebank, Jhb, is closed with razor wire around it. CR must take a lot of pride in the performance of his ministers because he hasn’t complained.

    • Patrick O'Shea says:

      The favoured hotels of the JZ brigade.

  • Allauddin Thobani Thobani says:

    Minister Lindiwe Sisulu associate with Watson family through her daughter Ayanda Sisulu in Simmer and Jack Mines Limited mining gold unlawfully protected by Minister Susan Shabangu as Minister of Minerals & Energy at the time which continue under Village Main Reef Mines Limited under Mr Bernard Swanepoel from 2011 to the present day protected by DMRE, DEA, DWS, SAPS and DPP North Gauteng despite prima facie evidence of illicit mining of gold and environmental crimes.

    • Coen Gous says:

      Gosh, thank you! This comment is the best of the day by commentators to any article, in fact better than this very article by Ferial. Perhaps Ferial and DM needs to follow up on this. This is not a comment, but real news! To me in any case.

    • Brian Cotter says:

      Not the famous Minister, Susan Shabangu, who was on track to give the Sishen Mine away to the Guptas

  • Jon Quirk says:

    Thank you all at Daily Maverick for this article that makes far less opaque the connection of Sisulu to the RET forces; if Ramaphosa does not fire her, then he is not only incompetent but a coward to boot.

    Stand up and save your country, Me President.

    • Coen Gous says:

      Cut the C..p Jon. Press delete your last sentence, and emphasize your previous paragraph, especially the last three words. You know as well as I do, that even if he eventually removes Sisulu after his masters in the ANC’s NEC gave him their permission, he will remain a coward.

  • Brian Cotter says:

    Wasn’t Sisulu at Nkandla a couple of days before JZ landed in prison? No surprise on a trip to Dubai she met unsavoury characters in public. What about in private, who did she also meet up with? Love to know what the honorary queen of the ANC was up to.

  • Craig B says:

    The only flight from Dubai that we interested in is the extradition flight that lands outside Kgosi Mampuru

  • Peter Doble says:

    Ms Broomstick carries as much weight as a fart in a thunderstorm – and is about the same use. Just another waste of space fiddling on the edges of absolute failure.

  • virginia crawford says:

    Birds of a feather flock together. I used to be a crook but now I’m not….mmmmm.

  • Sam Shu says:

    Queen “let them eat cake” went to Dubai for orders from her masters (mistresses?). Heartbreaking and indicative that CR has taken no action

  • Tim Price says:

    She’s a RET rent seeker.

  • T Mac says:

    Deja-vu. Another presidential hopeful being feted by the Guptas. This might explain the undermining of the judiciary and CR. The campaign to bring the Guptas back seems to be underway….

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