As the leader of the most ‘successful’ ethnic homeland of the apartheid era, Bophuthatswana, Lucas Mangope was a controversial figure. His legacy still divides opinion to this day. In this extract from his book Lucas Mangope – A life Oupa Segalwe incisively examines Mangope’s relationship with a dodgy European wheeler and dealer who died under a hail of bullets
In the years leading up to the day he died in a hail of bullets, Kalmanovich had been involved in music as a concert promoter, arranging shows for the likes of pop megastar Michael Jackson. He later became a patron of a female basketball outfit, Spartak Moscow. Owner of a massive drug store in Russia, he was also associated with the criminal underworld in Moscow. Local media reports linked him to Vyacheslav Ivankov, a crime kingpin also known as Yaponchik, who was himself gunned down in Moscow while leaving a restaurant in July 2009. He died from injuries sustained in the attack three months later. Kalmanovich emerged in Bophuthatswana in the 1980s as a notoriously wealthy business figure who made his fortune from questionable dealings with the homeland government.
He went on to become somewhat of a diplomatic representative of President Mangope’s administration in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. A close associate of Mangope’s at the time, he became a flamboyant multimillionaire in South Africa, thanks to shady construction contracts dished out by the Bophuthatswana government. He also had interests in building crocodile farms, hotels and apartment blocks. But it was the government contracts – allegedly awarded irregularly and made possible by the improper relations between him and Mangope – that set Kalmanovich on a fairytale road to riches.
He wielded so much influence over Mangope and his government that Bophuthatswana civil servants secretly called him the ‘White President’. Former economic adviser to Mangope, Carl Magyar, nicknamed him ‘Rasputin’, after Russian mystic Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. As in the case of Kalmanovich’s links to Mangope, Rasputin enjoyed unsavoury ties with the family of Moscow’s last emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, in the early 1900s. He was believed to have commanded massive power and influence in late imperial Russia.
Writing in the Sunday Times in 1988, Magyar said he had found Kalmanovich ‘too unreliable, unpredictable, incompetent and elusive’. He had suggested to Mangope that he fire Kalmanovich but the president insisted that the dismissal must be carried out ‘gingerly’. On one occasion, Mangope assigned Magyar to investigate Kalmanovich’s operations in Israel. ‘Respectable Israeli businessmen pleaded with me to convey to Mr Mangope warnings to avoid association with Kalmanovich, as no one would deal with us through him. This guy had a bad case of terminal measles,’ Magyar wrote. ‘I kept nodding my head in nervous agreement, as I had already been informed of his mysterious East German connections. But the president was infatuated with him for reasons unknown – we were all intrigued with this.’
Mangope and Kalmanovich were introduced in 1980 by Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald, a onetime Bophuthatswana trade representative in New York. ‘I told Mangope there was only so much I could do for him in the US and he would be far more successful dealing with Israel . . . I suggested they hire Shabtai,’ Greenwald was quoted as saying in the Business Day in 1988. Another source suggests that the two met through renowned hotelier Sol Kerzner. Not only was Kerzner himself a close Mangope associate in his own right at the time, he was a lifelong benefactor who had also been alleged to have greased the Bophuthatswana leader’s palm in exchange for favourable decisions. Whichever of the two accounts is correct, the meeting of the two men marked the beginning of what is alleged to have been a mutually beneficial relationship that seemingly bankrolled Kalmanovich’s extravagant lifestyle. A heavy-smoking and yet sober socialite, Kalmanovich was celebrated for his globetrotting ways, partying up a storm in the world’s biggest cities while driving around in a pricey Rolls Royce that was once owned by Romanian head of state Nicolae Ceausescu. He often travelled on a Bophuthatswana diplomatic passport. He had his spendthrift persona in common with Mangope, under whose leadership Bophuthatswana outrageously purchased an R8 million residence in Paris. The house had previously been home to Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco. Mmabatho also bought another abode, worth R13 million, in London’s leafy Holland Park. Both these properties were acquired in the 1980s. With full-time
housekeeping staff, the residences were always at the ready to receive private visitors, including the president’s family. He also had a fleet of 29 cars for his official use, including a range of BMWs and a Buick. On his arrival in Bophuthatswana, Kalmanovich was on the run from his adoptive country of citizenship. This was shortly after it emerged that he had been responsible for passing on to Moscow sensitive American intelligence that Israel had acquired from Jonathan Pollard, an American national, who, at the time, was serving life imprisonment in the US for spying for Israel.
In Mmabatho, he reinvented himself as a construction mogul. He partnered with a Frankfurt investor, Henry Landschaft, who brokered a deal that saw Kalmanovich’s then Sandton City-based company, LIAT Finance Trade and Construction Corporation, awarded a contract to build a shopping centre near Ga-Rankuwa in 1982.376 Although bids of R18 million had been received from leading domestic firms, LIAT, which had tendered a higher amount of R23 million, bagged the contract. But rather than execute the work, LIAT – named after Kalmanovich’s daughter – took a R5 million ‘management fee’ and subcontracted the job to a local company.
In 1984, the Bophuthatswana government awarded LIAT a R96 million contract for a housing project in Mabopane and the construction of Mmabatho Stadium, then the Independence Stadium, in Mahikeng. The contract was awarded without going on tender. Again, the job was later subcontracted to a South African company, with LIAT reportedly pocketing between R8 million and R15 million in ‘management fees’.
Mangope, who, throughout the scandal, had avoided commenting on the allegations that Kalmanovich was a central figure in large-scale corruption involving his government, was accused of accepting kickbacks from LIAT. In his 1999 book Economic Warfare: Sanctions, Embargo Busting,and their Human Cost, RT Naylor alleged that ‘LIAT’s main contribution to [Bophuthatswana’s] economic development was to win public contracts, sublet the actual work to other companies whose own bids had been lower, then kick back part of the profits to [Mangope]’.
Naylor wrote that ‘to make sure he got paid, Kalmanovich also arranged for [the homeland] to borrow abroad, specifically from Kredietbank in Belgium, the institution through which South African intelligence financed its European espionage activities’. In 1988, the Business Day quoted an unnamed Bophuthatswana government spokesman who confirmed that the homeland’s public works department had made an application to the administration’s tender board for the contract of the construction of 2 000 houses in Mabopane to be awarded without calling for tenders. The spokesman could not provide reasons for the decision to handpick LIAT for the job other than saying it ‘concerned ministers’. He denied that the national stadium in Mahikeng and another one elsewhere in the homeland, most likely Odi in Mabopane, were built by LIAT.
About the author
Oupa Segalwe served as spokesperson for the Public Protector for 13 years. He is a seasoned communications specialist with journalism training. The writing this book was a decade-long project. He hails from the rural village where Mangope was chief, long before becoming president of Bophuthatswana.
About the book
Publication date: 15 July 2024
Price: R350,00
Pages: 284
Digital Edition
Publication Date: 15 July 2024
Price: R280,00
