Koos Bekker lives a pretty charmed life.

For a start, last week’s Hurun Global Rich List 2020 put his net worth at $2,4 billion (around R36 billion), making him the third richest South African, and 1 208th richest person in the world.

There’s a stat I would bust out from time to time, if I were old Koos.

He’s also been in the news following the opening of The Newt in Somerset Hotel, a joint venture between Koos and his partner, Karen Roos.

You can enjoy a video tour of that luxury estate here.

Closer to home, though, the chairman of Naspers has had a rockier ride, after damning testimony by former communications minister Yunus Carrim at the commission of inquiry into state capture.

Yes, that is still happening, and no, nobody is being held accountable for the criminality exposed every day.

For more on what Carrim had to say, here’s the Sowetan:

…Carrim says he believes the deal entered into between MultiChoice and the SABC for the broadcast of the 24-hour news channel on the DStv platform was a “policy capture” of the public broadcaster.

Testifying before the commission of inquiry into state capture yesterday, Carrim said he believes that MultiChoice, through its owner Koos Bekker, had used the negotiations to capture the SABC.

When the SABC was launching its 24-hour news channel in 2013, which was to be hosted on MultiChoice’s DStv platform, the company agreed to pay R553m over five years for the news channel but requested exclusive access to its archived material in return.

According to Carrim, MultiChoice also used these negotiations to influence government policy on the migration from analogue to digital television through set-top boxes which it was opposed to. To date the migration has not taken place. Carrim said MultiChoice put a clause in their agreement that the public broadcaster would not encrypt its set-top boxes.

MultiChoice shouldn’t be influencing SABC policy, or government policy on digital migration that can be manipulated to protect MultiChoice’s monopoly over the pay-TV sector.

They also dealt directly with then SABC chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, and you can count any dealings done with Hlaudi as shady at the best of times.

He signed off on a deal which handed MultiChoice a catalogue worth around R1 billion for free, and scored himself a R15 million bonus, without the approval of the SABC board.

An in-depth account of Carrim’s testimony can be found here, but let’s get down to business.

In his cartoon on the Daily Maverick yesterday, Zapiro didn’t mess around:

Message received, loud and clear.

Who’s up for some grand hypocrisy? Enter the EFF’s Mbuyiseni Ndlozi:

Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of VBS Bank being looted.

Also, as someone pointed out in a reply to the tweet, this “shocking media silence” angle isn’t working:

Nail on the head, Mr Dick.

Still, Bekker has a great deal to answer for, and if the commission of inquiry into state capture ever leads to more than the airing of our country’s dirty laundry, he must be held to account.

[sources:sowetan&dailymaverick]