Bridgman Sithole, one of Deputy President Paul Mashatile's oldest and closest friends, is a director of a company set to make considerable profits over the next two decades from a major multibillion-rand government energy contract, reports New24.

Another associate, Robinson Ramaite, whose companies have benefitted from Gauteng government contracts in the past, could similarly pocket millions from a mega housing project east of Pretoria.

Sithole is considered one of Mashatile's closest friends and is chairperson of the board of the Manzi Mashatile Foundation, named after the Deputy President's deceased wife.

Mashatile has holidayed at a luxury holiday home on the southern Cape coast, owned by Ramaite's company, and sources in Mashatile's circles say they remain ‘good friends’.

This in the wake of various revelations about Mashatile's seeming life of excess, bankrolled by businessmen such as corruption-accused Edwin Sodi, and Ndavhe Mareda, whose company has scored Eskom coal supply contracts. And last week, Netwerk24 reported two of Mashatile's sons, Thabiso Mashatile and Tinyiko Mvelase, are linked to a company that has received government tenders.

Sithole is a director of Aventro Investments which holds 14.5% in Redstone CSP, believed to be SA’s biggest and most expensive independent power producers' project that is being constructed at a cost of R11.5bn by the end of 2023.

Aventro was first awarded shares in the project in 2021. Within weeks of Sithole assuming his directorship at Aventro, the company made a R12m donation to the ANC on 29 March 2019. 

The company donated a total of R34.8m to the governing party in the space of seven months, but has not donated since the implementation of the Political Party Funding Act that would have necessitated the publication of the donations by the ANC.

Aventro CEO Tebogo Nkosi previously confirmed the donations to News24.

It is unclear whether Sithole is also a shareholder of Aventro and if so, the extent of his shareholding as the company has refused to provide its shareholder registers for scrutiny. He has been listed as a director of the company since 1 February 2019. Sithole did not want to comment about Aventro, saying through his lawyer, ‘our client is not at liberty nor under any compulsion to be drawn into replying to interrogatories…’

Sithole and another of Mashatile's oldest friends, Mike Maile, have approached the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) for an urgent interdict preventing Media24 publications, including News24, from linking them to the term ‘Alex Mafia’.

Mashatile, Maile and Sithole also formed an investment company together, called Dibata Bata Investments.

All three were also shareholders in two other companies, Gadlex and Mowana Investments. Mashatile disowned the shares in Mowana and was later cleared of wrongdoing by then-Gauteng integrity commissioner Jules Browde, reports News24.

Through Mowana Investments, however, Sithole held shares in several companies that have done business with the government extensively over the past 15 years, including Stefanutti Stocks that won multibillion-rand tenders with Eskom and that Sithole personally was a shareholder until at least 2016.

Mowana and Sithole have since dispensed with their shareholding in Stefanutti Stocks, according to a company lawyer.

Full News24 report