Fake degrees and phantom gigs — the bogus claims of DA candidate Abdulkader Elyas

Five years before the DA sanctioned Cape Town councillor Abdulkader Elyas for lying about being a medical doctor, he was claiming an extraordinary side career as an in-demand speaker for big corporates and international foundations while still a University of Cape Town (UCT) student. 

Emails sent by Elyas obtained by Daily Maverick from his 2018/2019 stint on the UCT Student Representative Council (SRC) contain falsehoods about his professional affiliations and activities and suggest a pattern of using fabricated, impressive-sounding speaking events to justify his absence from SRC meetings.

One such talk, which Elyas claimed was scheduled for April 2019, was described as a “closed” event, allegedly worth $3,500 to the organisers, where Elyas was slated as delivering an insider’s briefing on “the kingmakers of the D********* *******E”: presumably the Democratic Alliance.

On Wednesday, Elyas declined to give Daily Maverick on-record comment.

The DA’s Federal Legal Commission (FLC) was meeting on Wednesday evening to consider the 31-year-old’s fate within the party after he reportedly failed to comply with a previous disciplinary agreement hammered out after News24 exposed the fact that he did not have qualifications in either medicine or actuarial science, contrary to his claims.

The DA federal council chair, Ashor Sarupen, told Daily Maverick he could not discuss internal disciplinary matters.

Secret sponsors, phantom companies

The 2019 SRC emails show Elyas repeatedly excusing himself from meetings with the excuse that he was required to carry out public speaking engagements elsewhere.

By the end of March 2019, the then SRC president, Asanda Lobelo, appeared to be demanding concrete proof of these speaking gigs.

An email sent by Elyas to Lobelo on 1 April 2019 – but apparently no April Fool’s joke – read: “You made a request for a verifiable electronically signed email that serves as proof of the speaking arrangements that I have scheduled due to my contractual obligation to one of my Sponsors and partners.”

Elyas let Lobelo know that he was “under a Non Disclosure Agreement [NDA]” which prohibited him from sharing information about the activities of his “sponsors” – but out of “respect” was attaching a redacted copy of an email confirming his speaking engagements sent by the organisers.

Elyas added that he trusted Lobelo would accept the legally-binding nature of an NDA and “not request information that could compromise myself legally any further than required”.

The email Elyas appended as proof of his speaking engagements was purportedly from an email address ending in the domain name of the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, an international philanthropic network. The foundation did not respond to Daily Maverick’s questions on Wednesday.

The email addressed Elyas as “CEO of Bokamoso Philanthropic Organisation”, “CEO of Elyas Investment Inc”, and “Majority Shareholder” of Teach Me 2 and several other companies.

Daily Maverick could find no trace of the existence of Bokamoso Philanthropic Organisation, Elyas Investment Inc, or three other companies in which the email lists Elyas as majority shareholder. There also appear to be no South African company records to indicate that Elyas has ever been the director of a company.

Teach Me 2, however, does exist: it is an extremely successful South African tutoring platform that in July was named as one of Time magazine’s top ed-tech companies worldwide.

Nick Miller, the CEO and founder of Teach Me 2, confirmed to Daily Maverick that Elyas was never a shareholder.

But Teach Me 2 did find Elyas in its records. These showed that he applied to be a tutor for the company, but withdrew from the process when documentary proof of his claimed qualifications was required.  

“We have pretty stringent vetting,” said Miller.

The body of the email takes a strangely hush-hush approach to Elyas’s three alleged upcoming speaking engagements, stating that venues for the talks will only “be disclosed via phonecall 2 (two) days prior”.

The email indicates that these speaking gigs must be undertaken by Elyas “in accordance with your Scholarship with ‘Ax Cap’ and it’s [sic] subsidiaries”.

Daily Maverick could not find a company or philanthropic organisation called “Ax Cap”, or any potential link between such an entity and the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation.

“Axe Cap” (short for Axe Capital) is, however, the name of a fictional New York hedge fund in the TV series Billions, about a brilliant but unethical financier trying to outrun the law.

Elyas’s three alleged talks were to be on his “field of expertise”, according to the email: one on financial trading, one on capitalism, and the last would provide “an insight into the king makers of the D******** *******E”.

This third talk, seemingly on the DA, was specified as “Closed Talk no Electronics”. 

By 2019, Elyas was involved in DA student politics, having been elected onto the UCT SRC in 2018 as a Democratic Alliance Students Organisation candidate.

The email concluded by reminding Elyas that for each talk, the organisers would pay $3,500 (around R50,000 at that time), to be “donated to a philanthropic organisation of your choice, via double blind selection”.

It did not explain how a beneficiary personally selected by Elyas would also undergo double-blind selection, or why.

Accenture disowns speaking invitation

Another email exchange, a month earlier, revealed a similar pattern. A 1 March 2019 email from Elyas explained that he would not be able to attend an upcoming SRC meeting because his “sponsor” required him to host a panel discussion on the same evening.

After seemingly being asked to provide proof of this obligation, Elyas sent a document which appeared to be on an Accenture letterhead.

Written seemingly by an Accenture HR official named “Marilieze Gabriel”, the letter invited Elyas to host the “Role of Strategy Consulting in emerging economies” panel discussion. (The “Ax Cap” email a few weeks later also referred to Elyas in the subject line as “Strategy Manager Accenture”.)

“This will count towards the annual Activation’s [sic] as stipulated in your foundation requirements,” read the alleged Accenture email. “For more information contact your talent manager.”

Daily Maverick could not find any evidence online of a current or former Accenture employee named Marilieze Gabriel.

“We can confirm that this is not a genuine letter or communication from Accenture,” spokesperson Jonathan Mahapa told Daily Maverick on Wednesday after being sent the document.

Mahapa said the email address used on the letter was in a format that did not exist.

The DA’s Elyas headache

Before the DA’s FLC meeting on Wednesday evening, Elyas was ranked in fourth place on the DA’s proportional representation (PR) list for Cape Town for the November local government elections, with only party heavyweights Geordin Hill-Lewis, JP Smith and Xanthea Limberg listed above him.

Considering that the DA won 52 PR seats in the last government elections, Elyas would be a shoo-in so high on the list.

The FLC’s Wednesday deliberations are focused on a March FLC ruling which, according to reporting from News24, found that Elyas had failed to comply with the conditions of a disciplinary deal reached in September 2024 after he pleaded guilty to providing false information related to medical and actuarial science degrees he claimed to have from UCT.

Among the reported conditions were that Elyas undergo psychological assessment and receive psychological treatment if advised. Elyas was also barred from holding any internal party positions.

The FLC’s March ruling found that Elyas had violated these conditions, and was serving as the manager of the Western Cape campaign team ahead of the local government elections. 

Daily Maverick understands that Wednesday’s FLC discussions were likely to be tense due to the support Elyas continues to enjoy from high-ranking party figures, even after the exposure of his qualifications fraud, as a result of his energetic campaigning. 

The SRC emails suggest, however, that Elyas’s false claims stretch back years before his qualifications came under scrutiny. 

His continued rise also poses a difficult underlying question for the DA: If Elyas could not get through the vetting process to be a tutor for Teach Me 2, how did he sail through the due diligence necessary to become a public representative for the country’s second-biggest political party? DM