Illustrative image: Jeffrey Epstein. (Photo: Davidoff Studios Photography / Getty Images) | South African flag. (Photo: Frennie Shivambu / Gallo Images) | (By Daniella Lee Ming Yesca) 
In September 2013, an unknown correspondent wrote to Jeffrey Epstein:
“AHLAN WA SAHLAN WHOM YOU KNOW IN SOUTH AFRICA BESIDE PRESIDENT MANDELA AND PRESIDENT ZUMA”
“Many,” replied Epstein.
Epstein, a relentless networker, was not lying.
The tranche of three million new records released by the US Department of Justice shows Epstein’s South African ties stretched back as far as the 1980s.
When late South African hotelier Sol Kerzner’s chief of staff emailed Epstein in 2010 to ask for a New York meeting, Epstein’s email account responded: “Jeffrey, and Ghislaine Maxwell, have met Sol with [redacted], and you might remind Sol that their first contact was with David and Cathy Lurie, in the eighties”.
There are references within the emails to Epstein holding meetings with South African-born former Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg; businessman Rob Hersov’s contact details are found in Epstein’s address book; and in an October 2014 exchange, Epstein advised a contact to approach African Rainbow Minerals CEO Patrice Motsepe for investment in a business plan.
Presented with a list of possible investors to approach, which included Motsepe and several Hollywood actors and directors, Epstein replied: “Motsepe [and two others] most likely to help you [sic] money”.
He continued: “I have some ideas. You can be a conduit from black wealth to silicon valley. Why are there so few blacks in silicon valley. Great opportunity.”
There is no indication that Glasenberg, Hersov or Motsepe knew Epstein beyond his business identity as an international financier, or participated in anything improper.
Hersov has told News24 that he met Epstein only once, at a New York cocktail party. Glasenberg and Motsepe could not be reached by Daily Maverick for comment on Tuesday, and it is unclear whether Motsepe ever interacted with Epstein at all.
Their presence within Epstein’s records likely merely reflects how assiduously he cultivated contact with wealthy or influential people who might be of use to him down the line.
But the Epstein Files also make clear that Epstein’s interest in South Africa went far beyond the country’s power brokers.
He was also receptive to a history lesson from one of his most unlikely correspondents, academic Noam Chomsky, who schooled Epstein in a 2015 exchange on the effects of the apartheid sports boycott.
Explaining why the US was so late to join the sanctions against the apartheid regime, Chomsky wrote: “Cuban forces drove South African aggressors out of Angola, compelled them to abandon illegally held Namibia, and made it clear to them that their hope for dominating the region couldn’t be realized. And there also was a solution acceptable to South African elites and to Washington: keep the socioeconomic system in place and allow some black faces in the limousines”.
Perhaps recognising that he was out of his depth, Epstein responded: “I add little to this dialogue.”
Payments to South African accounts
It was South Africa’s women, rather than its history, that seem to have preoccupied Epstein the most.
At a number of points in the emails, he expresses a desire – without specifying why – to employ South African nationals.
“Find me a South African assistant,” he wrote to an unknown person in November 2011.
In September 2011, he asked another unknown correspondent: “Do you have, or know of, a great South African manager that would like to run my six houses?”
South Africans did end up on his staff. One email planning travel specifies that Epstein will be accompanied by a South African personal assistant, while it has been well documented that a couple from Jeffrey’s Bay helped manage hospitality on Epstein’s Caribbean island.
The emails also reveal that Epstein started sending money to South African recipients as far back as 2003.
The financier’s Chase Morgan account was used to wire amounts ranging from $500 to $6,000 between February 2003 and April 2004 to Standard Bank accounts in South Africa. Because the account numbers are redacted, it is impossible to say whether there was just one recipient, or multiple.
In January 2010, the South African payments started up once more, after an unknown person emailed Epstein’s staffer to say “Jeffrey asked me to send you my account details”, with another Standard Bank account, linked to a Cape Town branch, presented.
Between January and December 2010, he sent at least $34,000 (almost R250,000 at the time) to one or multiple Standard Bank accounts.
The purpose of the payments is unclear, and Epstein appears to have been transferring money to many countries.
In one particularly chilling exchange, from emails with a person who appears to be a girl in Brazil, she supplies “my mom’s bank account details”, requests a certain amount of money, and adds, “I’ve spoken to the doctor and we will be able to get it done tomorrow”. The money, in other words, was likely for a medical procedure.
On the prowl for South African girls
The emails also reveal that Epstein had a number of intermediaries supplying him with the pictures and profiles of South African girls keen on international modelling – or what they assumed was international modelling.
“She would like to travel to Paris or NY,” reads a laconic email of this kind from June 2014, alongside photos of a Cape Town woman.
Epstein seems to have made heavy use of a so-called “scout” called Daniel Siad, who is described in another email as a “recruiter of girls and/or women for J. Epstein”.
Chat logs show Siad sending Epstein pictures of girls from various world cities for review. On one such occasion, indicating the level of control he expected to exercise over his victims, Epstein responds to a photograph: “she is nice her boobs are awful. They will have to be redone”.
One of the cities Siad prowled for Epstein was Cape Town, which Siad described to Epstein as a place where the “potential of girls was huge”.
At one time, another redacted correspondent even plotted with Epstein about luring in an unnamed young South African man using the same kind of acquisitive language that Epstein used for women.
“We need to find a way to get this boy for my birthday... I will send you details and then I need to devise a plan of action,” Epstein’s friend wrote.
“He’s 24 and I just want even half an hour with him. I spoke to him last night he was holding my hand and speaking Afrikaans to me. He is South African but dated [name redacted], ( so we seriously need a plan) and he guessed I was 27”.
One of Epstein’s most high-profile survivors has been South African Juliette Bryant, who was awarded financial compensation from Epstein’s estate after his death. Bryant has been telling her harrowing account to Daily Maverick in recent days.
The full extent of Epstein’s South African network may never be known. While these newly released documents reveal a pattern of predatory behaviour that stretched across continents, they represent only a fraction of his activities.
For the South African women who fell into his orbit – whether through modelling scouts, employment opportunities or other seemingly legitimate channels – the promise of international opportunity masked a far darker reality.
Taken together, the newly released records sketch a disturbing picture of how Epstein folded South Africa into his global system of exploitation: a place where elite connections, lax scrutiny and the aspirations and financial needs of young people could be leveraged to his advantage. DM