What the Guptas pulled off in South Africa has been extensively documented: the backroom deals, the rigged contracts, the wholesale plunder of national resources.
Why the Guptas moved from Singapore to South Africa remains a mystery. The Guptas say they were once again prodded by their father, who believed that “Africa would be the next America of the world.” But when Atul arrived in Johannesburg, at age 25, with an initial investment of $350,000, South Africa’s future was far from obvious. Roiled by internal racial and ethnic strife, the country was on the verge of forming its first democratic government, and Indian businessmen who had prospered under apartheid thought Gupta was a fool. “We are all leaving,” they told him. “Why are you coming? This country’s going to go to the dogs.”
In South Africa, the Guptas found a country with the allure of the white First World, but all the guile of the Third World in which they’d been raised. And unlike other Indians in South Africa, they were free of the country’s history of oppression; as Hindu males born in independent India, they had been like white men back home. Which is why, when opportunity presented itself in South Africa, they acted like white men before them—with impunity.
How the Gupta Brothers Hijacked South Africa Using Bribes Instead of Bullets
It started with black market rations and ended with “the wedding of the century.” Novelist Karan Mahajan travels to India and South Africa to understand how three small-time investors fleeced an entire country—aided by some of the world’s most respected consultants.
