Former Khulubuse Zuma business associate found in contempt of court

Sikhumbuzo Shamase, one-time business associate of Khulubuse Zuma, the nephew of former president Jacob Zuma, has been found in contempt of court for failing to hand over two vehicles after Standard Bank obtained summary judgment in 2017.

The two were partners in a company called Sham-Mok Investments that got suckered out of R50 million in 2013 when buying gold bars in Guinea that turned out to be fake.

The failed Guinea gold deal appears to have set in motion a chain of events eventually leading to Standard Bank calling up loan facilities to Shamase, and the South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) attaching more than R3.3 million from a property sale for alleged contravention of exchange controls.

These were the proceeds of the sale of a property in Zimbali in KwaZulu-Natal.

Shamase intended to challenge Sarb over its seizure of the R3.3 million. This never happened, though it served to postpone Standard Bank’s attempts to recover its loans.

The matter came before the Pretoria High Court in 2021 when Shamase was ordered to hand over two Mercedez-Benz vehicles to the sheriff of the court within 10 days due to the loans falling into default, and a property in Glenvista, south of Johannesburg, was ordered to be put up for auction at a minimum of R2.45 million.

The contempt order relates to Shamase’s non-compliance with the order to hand over the two vehicles.

Contempt order

On 14 December 2021 the registrar of the court issued a writ of delivery authorising the sheriff to remove the vehicles and place them in possession of the bank.

The writ was served on Shamase’s wife, who refused to disclose the whereabouts of the vehicles, as these were not located on the property.

The Shamases’ lawyer then entered negotiations to settle the outstanding vehicle loans owed to Standard Bank, though these were not honoured.

The sheriff made four visits to reclaim the vehicle, only to find the residence locked and unattended, with the vehicles nowhere to be found.

On 24 June 2022, Standard Bank launched contempt of court proceedings against the Shamases, who indicated their intention to oppose the matter.

The following month the Glenvista property was sold for R2.85 million, which went to settle a home loan of R3.4 million.

Answering affidavit

In October 2022, the Shamases filed an answering affidavit in the contempt case and a recission of the previous order won by the bank in the Pretoria High Court.

They argued that Standard Bank had financially crippled them until recently, and that Sarb had not properly accounted to them after seizing the proceeds of the Zimbali property sale.

Shamase claimed the outstanding balances on the vehicles were settled in January 2018, otherwise the bank’s attorneys would not have paid his attorneys R400 000 and handed over the relevant eNatis documents, thereby completing the legal transfer of ownership.

The bank later recovered the eNatis documents from Shamase. The court found that the mere handing over of the eNatis certificates to Dr Shamase did not result in a transfer of ownership.

Particularly not as the outstanding amounts in terms of the vehicle finance agreements had at that stage not been settled because of the intervention of Sarb.

The court dismissed a counter-application and found Sikhumbuzo Shamase in ‘wilful contempt’ of court for failing to abide by the October 2021 order to hand over the vehicles.

He has been sentenced to 90 days in prison, suspended for three years on condition that he does not again breach the court order.

He was also ordered to pay the costs of the court action.

Zuma, the former director of Aurora Empowerment Systems, was provisionally sequestrated in 2019 after liquidators of Pamodzi mining company brought an application to declare the directors of Aurora of having behaved recklessly.

Aurora took control of six mining companies near Johannesburg and was found by the court to have allowed the assets to idle, and left more than 5 000 workers unpaid for months.

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