Johnny Copelyn

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Johnny Copelyn
Member of the National Assembly
In office
1994–1997
Personal details
Born
John Anthony Copelyn

1949 or 1950 (age 73–74)
CitizenshipSouth Africa
Political partyAfrican National Congress
Alma materWitwatersrand University

John Anthony Copelyn (born 1949 or 1950) is a South African businessman and former trade unionist who has been chief executive officer of Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) since 1997. He entered the company as the head of the investment wing of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), where he was formerly general secretary.

Copelyn's union career began during apartheid at the National Union of Textile Workers, later merged into SACTWU. While running SACTWU's investment wing in the mid-1990s, he represented the African National Congress in the National Assembly during the first post-apartheid Parliament from 1994. He resigned his parliamentary seat in 1997 to take over HCI, henceforth run as a private-equity holding company, with his erstwhile business partner, fellow former unionist Marcel Golding. As of 2022, Copelyn's personal stake in HCI was worth nearly R1 billion.

Early life and union career[edit]

Copelyn was born in 1949 or 1950.[1] He is descended from Lithuanian Jews[2] and joined Habonim as a teenager.[3] He attended the University of the Witwatersrand, completing a bachelor of arts in 1973;[4] his unpublished honours thesis on the Pondoland revolt, completed the following year, is still widely cited in academia.[5][6] After finishing university, Copelyn moved to Durban in 1974, shortly after the 1973 Durban strikes, to join the trade union movement; his first job was as editor of the newly launched South African Labour Bulletin.[3] He soon became a national organiser for the National Union of Textile Workers (NUTW).[3] Banned by the apartheid government in November 1976, he spent the next few years training as an attorney.[3]

Not long after NUTW was merged into the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), Copelyn became its general secretary, succeeding Lionel October.[2] SACTWU, like NUTW, was an affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which was aligned to the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC) and subscribed to the Freedom Charter; in the debate between so-called "charterists" (who viewed the unions primarily as vehicles of the anti-apartheid movement) and "workerists" (who did not), Copelyn was firmly on the side of the workerists and advocated for the independence of unions from the ANC and South African Communist Party.[2][3]

Parliament: 1994–1997[edit]

In the 1994 general election, South Africa's first under universal suffrage, Copelyn stood as one of 20 candidates nominated to the ANC's party list by COSATU in terms of the Tripartite Alliance.[2] He was elected to a seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of the new South African Parliament.[7] He served in the seat until 1997. During the same period, he was chief executive officer of the SACTWU investment company, the union's investment wing,[8][9] and acted as an investment advisor to COSATU.[10] In this capacity he struck up a partnership with his friend and counterpart in the National Union of Mineworkers's investment wing, Marcel Golding.

Hosken Consolidated Investments: 1997–present[edit]

Copelyn and Golding resigned from Parliament in 1997 to run Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI), a holding company headquartered in Cape Town and publicly listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). They obtained a controlling stake in HCI by reversing a number of the unions' investment companies' assets.[8] Copelyn was installed as chief executive officer and Golding as executive chairperson. HCI operated as a private-equity holding company and made investments in media, casinos, and other sectors. In the mid-2000s, the company was known for its campaign to build a controlling stake in Tsogo Sun, which led to a hostile takeover of Cyril Ramaphosa's Johnnic in 2005–2006;[11][12] Copelyn also serviced as chief executive officer at Johnnic.[13]

Union investment model[edit]

The model of union investment pioneered by Copelyn and Golding through HCI was controversial among leftists and in some accounts promoted the rise of "business unionism".[3][14][15] Copelyn continued to run the SACTWU investment company, the major shareholder in HCI; the investment company grew from start-up capital of R15.6 million (R2 million from union savings and a R13.6-million loan from the Industrial Development Corporation) to a value of more than R7.5 billion in 2016.[8] Explaining his ambitious approach to union investments in the mid-1990s, Copelyn later said, "There were too many opportunities to simply close one's eyes and throw up one's purist hands in disgust. It was a moment that, if we hesitated, would be gone".[8] Copelyn pointed out that HCI benefitted SACTWU members not only by way of the union's investment company but also through HCI's social responsibility projects and investments in the clothing and textiles sector – notably Seardel, which HCI made a substantial investment in at a time when it was the largest employer of clothing workers in South Africa.[8][15]

Even more controversial, Copelyn himself became personally wealthy through share participation rights and directorship fees amassed as a result of HCI's activities, primarily through black economic empowerment deals that HCI was eligible for because its union shareholders were majority black.[15][16] Copelyn owned ten per cent of HCI – listed shares worth about R358 million – by July 2005,[16] and 13.9 per cent by the end of the year.[17][18] His stake was worth R837 million by 2014[19] and close to R1 billion in 2022.[14] On the point of his personal wealth, Copelyn argued that his wealth was not the result of empowerment deals, but that he and Golding had concentrated their personal stakes in HCI – and that of SACTWU – in January 2002, when HCI was pressured by institutional shareholders to offer them exit via share repurchase; according to Copelyn, institutional shareholders were nervous about the prospects of HCI's new media venture, e.TV, but he and Golding had been confident that HCI's shares were undervalued and had maintained their shareholdings.[18][16] He later said of this period, "We [Copelyn and Golding] risked everything we had, as well as everything we might ever have for the rest of our lives... It was absolutely not an empowerment deal but was a public offer in our personal capacities at a time the world deserted us."[8]

e.TV and Marcel Golding's exit[edit]

In October 2014, Golding was suspended from his HCI chairmanship pending disciplinary charges in connection with an unauthorised purchase of shares in Ellies.[20] Following an abortive court challenge, Golding resigned from all his HCI positions later the same week. He claimed that he had been suspended as punishment for refusing to yield to political pressure at e.TV, HCI's television news channel: according to Golding, Copelyn and HCI executive director Yunus Shaik (brother of Moe and Schabir) had driving "attempts to push me out" after Golding refused to ensure that e.TV provided favourable coverage of President Jacob Zuma in the run-up to the 2014 general election.[21][22] In the aftermath, Barbara Hogan, an independent non-executive director at HCI, also resigned,[22] saying that she was uneasy about the board's handling of the dispute and its broader handling of its media interests generally.[23][24]

Golding and Copelyn's parting was made official at a shareholder meeting at the end of October. Copelyn vigorously denied Golding's allegation of political interference at e.TV and continued to maintain that editorial standards had been irrelevant to Golding's suspension.[25] Both the Business Day and the Sunday Times reported that Copelyn and Golding's relationship had been deteriorating for some time before the disciplinary charges were lodged.[19][26]

Oil and gas[edit]

HCI is a major investor in British-based Impact Oil and Gas,[27][28] which in 2014 controversially secured oil-and-gas exploration rights off the Wild Coast of South Africa's Eastern Cape.[1] The exploration, which was to be operated by Shell, has been contested in South African courts. Copelyn became a non-executive director of Impact in 2014 and took over as non-executive chairman in 2020, around the same time that the company obtained an interest in a second Wild Coast exploration zone;[1] former COSATU general secretary Jay Naidoo has been publicly critical of Copelyn's role in the initiative.[29][30]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c "Former unionist Johnny Copelyn bets on Wild Coast oil and gas bonanza". Business Day. 5 December 2021. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d Johnson, R. W. (17 January 2017). "Retiring the lies of liberation". Politicsweb. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Webster, Edward (2016). "Maverick Insider: a struggle for union independence in a time of national liberation by Johnny Copelyn (review)". Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa. 92 (1): 158–168. doi:10.1353/trn.2016.0031. ISSN 1726-1368. S2CID 151545568.
  4. ^ "Illustrious Witsies and rankings". Wits Book 2019. Witwatersrand University. 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2023 – via Issuu.
  5. ^ Lodge, Tom (1983). Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945. Longman. p. 293. ISBN 978-0-582-64328-4.
  6. ^ Kepe, Thembela; Ntsebeza, Lungisile (14 October 2011). Rural Resistance in South Africa: The Mpondo Revolts After Fifty Years. Brill. pp. 53–5. ISBN 978-90-04-21446-0.
  7. ^ South Africa: Campaign and Election Report April 26–29, 1994. International Republican Institute. 1994. Retrieved 13 April 2023 – via Yumpu.
  8. ^ a b c d e f "Union maverick's road to 'BEE' riches". The Mail & Guardian. 3 June 2016. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  9. ^ "SA's instant millionaires". The Mail & Guardian. 31 March 1995. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  10. ^ "Cosatu In Secret Gambling Talks With Sol". The Mail & Guardian. 5 August 1994. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  11. ^ "An ignoble end". The Mail & Guardian. 13 January 2006. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  12. ^ "New takeover animal stalks corporate landscape". The Mail & Guardian. 8 August 2005. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  13. ^ Monteiro, Ana (16 November 2006). "New life for Johnnic". Business. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  14. ^ a b "Metalworkers' union saga revives investment company row". The Mail & Guardian. 8 August 2022. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  15. ^ a b c Nattrass, Nicoli; Seekings, Jeremy (2 January 2016). "Trade unions, the state and 'casino capitalism' in South Africa's clothing industry". Review of African Political Economy. 43 (147): 89–106. doi:10.1080/03056244.2015.1085379. ISSN 0305-6244. S2CID 155285924.
  16. ^ a b c "Ex-unionist rides BEE wave". The Mail & Guardian. 19 July 2005. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  17. ^ "Thumbs up for HCI takeover of Johnnic". The Mail & Guardian. 7 December 2005. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  18. ^ a b "White and empowered". The Mail & Guardian. 29 August 2006. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  19. ^ a b "Road to riches forks sharply for former union comrades". Sunday Times. 26 October 2014. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  20. ^ "E.tv holding company suspends Marcel Golding". The Mail & Guardian. 22 October 2014. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  21. ^ "E.tv's Golding says political pressure pushed him out". The Mail & Guardian. 24 October 2014. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  22. ^ a b "Marcel Golding resigns from e.tv". The Mail & Guardian. 27 October 2014. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  23. ^ "Union maverick's road to 'BEE' riches". The Mail & Guardian. 3 June 2016. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  24. ^ "HCI split leaves future of e.tv in the balance". The Mail & Guardian. 30 October 2014. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  25. ^ "Boardroom emotions run high as Golding resigns as HCI chair". eNCA. 30 October 2014. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  26. ^ "Why Marcel Golding was suspended by HCI". Business Day. 24 October 2014. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  27. ^ "HCI weighs options on rich Venus oilfield". Business Day. 29 August 2022. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  28. ^ Njini, Felix (25 January 2022). "It's 'poppycock': Shell's SA partner HCI blasts seismic survey uproar". Business. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  29. ^ Naidoo, Jay (17 February 2022). "Dear former comrades, how much power and money is enough?". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 28 April 2023.
  30. ^ Copelyn, Johnny (20 February 2022). "Dear Jay Naidoo, in the real world we cannot wish away petrol, diesel and gas usage". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 28 April 2023.

External links[edit]

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