There are many things one expects from a statement by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), Africa’s largest asset manager, with R3.5-trillion in assets under management. Perhaps a long affirmation of “value creation”, for example, or its “developmental mandate”. What you don’t expect is a public denunciation of gossip-blogger allegations about the personal life of one of its board members.
It’s a measure of just how far off the tracks the PIC has slipped that the board felt compelled to issue a press release that “noted with concern” what it described as defamatory attacks directed at board member Thabi Nkosi, including offensive claims about her personal life and the basis of her appointment.
The PIC did not specify who was making the defamatory attacks or why. But one quick Google search reveals that self-proclaimed “pope of pop culture” Musa Khawula has strayed from his normal subject matter of entertainment and fashion to discuss Nkosi and an alleged improper personal relationship with finance minister Enoch Godongwana.
Likewise, why Khawula might have strayed from his normal fare – which quite often involves publishing pictures of celebrities less than fully dressed – and directed his roughly 318,000 followers into the heady world of high finance is not clear. All PIC board chair David Masondo will say at this point is that the attacks on Nkosi are defamatory and include “offensive claims regarding her personal life and the basis of her appointment”.
“As I wish to state unequivocally that Ms Nkosi serves on this board because of her qualifications, experience and demonstrated record of leadership. It is disappointing that an accomplished leader in her own right should be subjected to misogynistic allegations that seek to diminish her achievements by attributing them to personal relationships rather than merit,” Masondo said.
“Such sexist and misogynistic attacks are not only unfair to Ms Nkosi, but also undermine broader efforts to ensure that capable women are able to lead and serve without being subjected to sexist and degrading speculation. Ms Nkosi enjoys the full confidence and support of the board. We reject these allegations and stand firmly behind her professionalism and contribution to the work of the PIC.”
The Lanseria issue
Though there is no visible connection, there is one of the PIC’s many financial outrages that is currently boiling, and its timing is hard to ignore.
The PIC is in the middle of a governance flare-up involving chief executive Patrick Dlamini, a whistleblower complaint, and the long-running Lanseria Airport/Acapulco dispute. At its centre is a PIC-funded empowerment stake in Lanseria Airport, a default, a contested valuation, an arbitration award and a later forensic review. The commercial fight has mutated into a governance fight over authority, conflicts, oversight and whether the PIC is properly protecting the pension money entrusted to it.
The real story is so wild, weird and financially suspect that it could only really emanate from arguably South Africa’s most incompetent fund manager, which, in real South African style, is the one allocated the most money to manage on behalf of comparatively one of the poorer segments of the populace, retired public servants.
The brief version of the Lanseria Airport / Acapulco dispute is that a company called Acapulco Trade and Invest 164, linked to businessman Kagiso Matjila, was the BEE partner in a Lanseria Airport deal.
The PIC lent Acapulco about R333m to buy a 25% stake in Lanseria Holdings, the company behind Lanseria Airport. Business Day says this loan was made in 2013 and Acapulco then defaulted. The debt had grown to roughly R630m with interest. Under the loan/security arrangement, the PIC moved to “perfect” its security – in effect, to take over Acapulco’s Lanseria shares. That left the PIC with a much larger direct stake in the airport, reportedly 62.5%.
But, hilariously, a valuation by Crowe JHB put the 25% stake at about R1.041bn, which meant that after subtracting Acapulco’s roughly R630m debt, Acapulco was still owed about R411m. The PIC hated this valuation, and perhaps itself for structuring its loan on such dubious terms, arguing it was wildly inflated and contained fundamental errors, including alleged double counting.
The dispute went to arbitration. But – and this can seemingly only happen to something in which the PIC is involved – an arbitration panel upheld Crowe’s valuation and ordered the PIC to pay Acapulco the R411m. Business Day reports that the PIC then obtained legal advice and paid Acapulco on October 15 2025.
The PIC later wanted to challenge or review the award, but legal advice apparently said its prospects were poor. In a written parliamentary reply, Godongwana said the PIC had obtained two senior counsel opinions, both indicating there were no good prospects of overturning the award; because the arbitration was final and binding, the PIC would have had to meet the much higher test for review, not simply argue that the valuation was wrong.
If only this was the sum total of the dispute, but there’s more. Acapulco’s lawyers accused the PIC of acting in a way that favoured Harith General Partners, also investors in Lanseria, alleging that Acapulco’s default was “engineered” to benefit Harith. They also demanded disclosure from Dlamini and the PIC board about possible conflicts involving Lanseria, FlySafair and Harith. These allegations are disputed.
Dlamini’s role became controversial because he had previously been a Lanseria Airport Holdings board member. He rejected suggestions that this created a conflict, telling parliament that the matter was between Acapulco and the PIC, not Lanseria itself.
Then the issue widened again. After Dlamini commissioned an independent forensic review into the handling of the Lanseria matter, a whistleblower complaint reportedly questioned whether he had proper authority to appoint PwC for that review. The Mail & Guardian says the PIC board is now assessing allegations around governance, executive authority and conflicts of interest connected to that investigation.
Beyond the scandal
That is why the Lanseria/Acapulco matter has become a perfect miniature of the PIC’s unlisted-investments problem: public money, complex empowerment structures, weak recovery mechanics, disputed valuations, and then a furious after-the-fact search for who dropped the ball.
The irony is that the PIC has plenty of legitimate questions to answer without anyone needing to invent illegitimate ones. Why did the Lanseria/Acapulco transaction end in such a costly dispute? Were the valuation and arbitration processes handled properly? Was the subsequent forensic review correctly authorised? Were conflicts, if any, properly declared and managed? Did the PIC act with sufficient speed, discipline and commercial self-protection when a funded empowerment structure went wrong? These are serious questions involving public money.
That is what makes the gossip so corrosive. It does not illuminate the governance issue; it fogs it. It turns a debate about institutional control into a sideshow about private life. It allows everyone to choose their preferred scandal and ignore the boring one, which is usually where the money went.
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Top image collage: Rawpixel; Currency.
