South Africa may have narrowly avoided a major national security breach following revelations of an alleged plan involving controversial businessman Vuzimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala and OR Tambo Airport.<\/p>\n
An investigative piece by News24 has revealed details, which reportedly included a luxury private terminal that could have allowed selected individuals to bypass immigration and security.<\/p>\n
Investigative journalist Jeff Wicks says the plan, if implemented, would have placed extraordinary power and wealth in Matlala’s hands.<\/p>\n
“The takeaway for me is that this is a man who had untramelled ambitions about wealth.”<\/p>\n
Wicks says the plans reached an advanced stage, where meetings were held, and documents were drawn up outlining how the private terminal would operate.<\/p>\n
“Our investigation started looking at his state procurement, both at Tembisa Hospital and at the SAPS, both mired by allegations of fraud and corruption.”<\/p>\n
He says Matlala’s involvement in the scheme came to light while he was in jail.<\/p>\n
The suspected criminal mastermind is currently behind bars in a super maximum security prison in Kokstad in KwaZulu-Natal.<\/p>\n
“There were plans afoot to have a very valuable stake at OR Tambo, R70 million a year that he was asking from Nedbank.”<\/p>\n
News24 managed to obtain Matlala’s concept document for ‘The Green Lounge’ luxury terminal, which the businessman planned to build at the airport’s cargo terminal.<\/p>\n
“How it was pitched was this haven of tranquillity, with the best fine dining, bars, smoking rooms, sleep pods, and it would be for Nedbank’s uber wealthy.”<\/p>\n
Wicks explains that the arrangement would have effectively given Matlala influence over who entered and exited the country.<\/p>\n
“The trappings of wealth that he was pushing at Nedbank were really at the surface; the implications of this were that Cat Matlala’s agents would have been responsible for security screening at that airport.”<\/p>\n
Moreover, according to the pitch document, clients would have been able to utilise a ‘fast track’ through the customs process.<\/p>\n
“That tells you that it was more than a lounge; it was actually a terminal.”<\/p>\n
And it’s this proximity to security processes at a national key point that is particularly concerning, given Matlala’s suspected links to drug cartels, says Wicks.<\/p>\n
The story follows earlier controversies involving Matlala, who is currently facing charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, fraud and attempting to defeat the ends of justice.<\/p>\n
To listen to Wicks in conversation with 702’s Bongani Bingwa, use the audio player below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa may have narrowly avoided a major national security breach following revelations of an alleged plan involving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[397,398,403,400,399,401,96,402,406,405,404,131],"class_list":{"0":"post-24855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-south-africa","8":"tag-ewn","9":"tag-ewn-news","10":"tag-ewn-south-africa","11":"tag-eye-witness-news","12":"tag-eyewitness-news","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-news-today","16":"tag-prime-media-plus","17":"tag-primedia-plus","18":"tag-primedia","19":"tag-south-africa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}