The cover of the tell-all book. The cover of the tell-all book.
DURBAN - THE Jacob Zuma era is not yet over - at least not in the world of publishing, or in South Africa’s High Court - and looks set to continue producing an explosive array of tell-all books.
Publishers have already been having a field day of late with books such as Jacques Pauw’s The President’s Keepers, Hennie van Vuuren’s, Apartheid Guns and Money, and Johann van Loggerenberg’s Rogue: The Inside Story of Sars’s Elite Crime Busting Unit.
The President’s Keepers became the fastest selling book in South Africa last year.
And now another tell-all book about the machiavellian nature of the Zuma-Gupta cabal has hit the shelves.
Indentured: Behind the Scenes at Gupta TV is journalist Rajesh Sundaram’s story of how he led a small team of Indian broadcast professionals and South African interns to launch the television news channel ANN7 with the power-grabbing and money-hungry mogul Atul Gupta and his cronies breathing down their necks.
Lured with promises of a professional challenge where he will have the chance to empower young black reporters to tell the stories of ordinary South Africans and train technicians in using the world’s best news gathering technology and state-of-the-art broadcast systems.
Sundaram soon learns how the influential family which hired him, the Guptas, are inextricably linked to the highest office in the land in a bid to create a propaganda tool that will not only advance a clear political agenda, but also position itself to loot state coffers of millions of rand.
Bridget Impey, the publishing director of Jacana Media, said the original manuscript of the fast-paced, easy reading book was written four years ago, but fears of litigation prevented publication.
She said it was only with the recent, spectacular collapse of the Guptas’ empire, and Jacob’s Zuma’s fall from highest office, that led to the book finally being printed - after extensive legal consultations.
“We have had a good couple of people (lawyers) pointing out the dangers, and others showing us what we can do to kind of skirt on the right side of litigation,” said Impey.
“Rajesh loves a good story. He will tell you everything about everybody but sometimes it is not pertinent to the story. So we have taken quite a bit out,” said Impey.
“Then there comes a time, when you think the moment is right, and that is now,” said Impey. “Everyone is fascinated by the Guptas and exactly what went down. What we have here is a first hand account of someone who was working with them. It’s very dramatic and opens a door into a world we otherwise don’t get to see.
“He (Rajesh) sat down and wrote it in an absolute frenzy. He whipped through the chapters. You feel this immediacy in reading it, almost as it happened. He takes you into the boardrooms, shows us the ghastly ways they behaved toward staff, like ‘We don’t want anyone with brains. Just give us models’.”
More importantly, said Impey, the book will leave readers marvelling at how the Gupta family had operated in the political arena.
While the GuptaLeaks had given South Africans the facts, Indentured will give readers the understanding and depth of the true nature of the Zuma-Gupta cabal, said Impey.
While that era is now over, it seems that flowering of books about the Zuma-Gupta era is only just beginning.
Gill Moodie, commissioning editor for Tafelberg which last year published The President’s Keepers, reckons another similar tell-all book is due to hit the shelves soon.
But exactly what the book is about, and who has written it, Moodie would not say.
“We are keeping that under wraps for now,” said Moodie.
