Two of South Africa’s military industrial and mining complex wheeler-dealers are directors in Avante Security Services Botswana, the company suspected of helping Bridgette Motsepe-Radebe to launder money for Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi’s presidential campaign.
Sunday Standard investigations have revealed that South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) veteran and alleged covert funding mule, Paul Langa was appointed director of Avante Security on 11th September 2018. A year earlier, Langa was fingered in the South African court as a covert funding mule in the ANC’s black op in which the party planned to spend R50 million on a secret campaign targeting opposition parties in the 2016 local government elections.
According to court report Langa’s South African company Zonkizizwe Investments, was used to collect money from private donors and pass it on to the ANC War Room.
Langa has also been linked to the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DIS) under former Director General Isaac Kgosi.
Kgosi Kgolo of Bakgatla tribe, Kgafela Kgafela in May 2013 wrote to the then Minister of Justice, Ramadeluka Seretse complaining that Paul Langa was working with Isaac Kgosi to illegally abduct and deport him back to Botswana.
“Your government has been disrupting my work in South Africa through various shocking deeds. Your DIS organization headed by Mr Isaac Kgosi has been active in the North West Province working collaboratively with Nyalala to divide and cause further confusion within the tribe. Your government has attempted to illegally abduct me for deportation to Botswana, so that Nyalala may continue to steal from the tribe whilst entrenching his hold of the royal seat. Nyalala is working relentlessly to assassinate me, as he has done to others, and your DIS is assisting him in his endeavors…. These matters have formally been reported to the South African Government to address, where we have highlighted the names of South African intelligent officers that your DIS has been working with, namely Mr Paul Langa and the former ambassador of South Africa to Botswana Mr Dikgang Moepeloe.”
According to the secret tapes that have been passed to the Sunday Standard, the former DIS boss, Isaac Kgosi has had a meeting with Bridgette Motsepe Radebe in which Venson-Moitoi’s presidential campaign was discussed.
Another South African businessman who is part of the military industrial and mining complex Lazarus Modjane Mbethe was also appointed director of Avante Security Services Botswana on 11th September 2018.
Mbethe is heavily involved in mining. He was part of the Pitsa ya Sechaba consortium that partnered with Chancellor House and the Russian company, Renova, to form United Manganese of Kalahari, which controversially got manganese rights in Northern Cape.
Mbethe and Langa were both named in a 2013 scandal in which South African military involvement in the Central African Republic was exposed as a front for ANC-linked deals.
According to the Mail & Guardian, Mbethe and Langa were directors in a company called Baga­moyo which was set up to exploit opportunities in the Central African Republic (CAR).
The pair was in partnership with former South African spy chief Billy Masetlha and connected businessperson and fixer Didier Pereira who was special adviser to former CAR president, Fran├ºois Boziz├®. The team initiated several business projects in the Central African Republic some involving diamonds.
The Mail& Guardian further revealed that Langa, Mbethe, Masetlha, and Pereira, appear as directors in two other shelf companies, Evening Star Trading 665 and Universal Pulse Trading 117, both set up in November 2006.
Their business dealings in the Central African Republic (CAR) bombed into a big scandal after a number of South African peace keeping soldiers were killed during the CAR operation.
Avante Security bank accounts in Botswana were earlier this month frozen on suspicion that the security company was being used to launder Motsepe-Radebe’s money for Venson-Moitoi’s campaign.
