Anyone remember Johann Rupert accompanying Cyril Ramaphosa to Washington to lie to the world that South Africa is safe as houses? Well, he may have been feeling magninous because all those millions of Rands he and his affiliates have pumped into the two ruling parties over the years has finally paid off.

A massive telecoms deal recently blocked by the Competition Commission, has now been rammed through after massive and unethical pressure from both the ANC and DA, with a few technical changes which do not substantively alter its fundamental character. What they can do now, is use their vertical integration of all layers of telecoms inrastructure to out any service that isn’t owned by their subsidiaries out of whole regions and territories, and as the share price of these competitors decline, they can scoop them up too. We detailed this strategic angle in our previous in-depth article on the deal here.

Remgro and the Vodacom Group have received the green light for their pursuit of a national telecoms monopoly, after they revised terms for Vodacom’s proposed acquisition of a 30% stake in Remgro’s vehicle Maziv, valuing the fibre network operator at up to 36 billion rand ($2 billion). Vodacom will contribute 4.9 billion rand in fibre infrastructure and pay 6.1 billion rand in cash for new Maziv shares, up from a previous offer of 6 billion rand in cash and 4.2 billion rand in assets.

Vodacom will also acquire additional shares from Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH) – a parasitic BEE equity firm comprised solely of black women – for approximately 2.5 billion rand. Maziv, owner of Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa, may declare a dividend of up to 4.2 billion rand before closing, reducing Vodacom’s cash payment by up to 1.3 billion rand. The deal’s equity valuation is 29.8 billion rand with the dividend or 34 billion rand without it.

Vodacom will pay an additional 600 million rand for Maziv’s 49.96% stake in Herotel, bringing the total equity value to 31.8 billion rand, or 36 billion rand if no dividend is declared. Vodacom’s option to increase its stake in Maziv was reduced from 10% to 4.95%, potentially reaching 34.95%. Following an agreement with the Competition Commission, the deal is set for an unopposed hearing at the Competition Appeal Court.

Effectively what is happening, is that the new merger sorts the fibre to home, fibre to the business, and business-to-business transmission access fibre network infrastructure into Maziv, and leaves Vodacom in charge of mobile data provision. This vastly increases Maziv’s infrastructural footprint, and consequently their grip on the market as a whole.