In December 2023, Shumani Lawrence Mulaudzi signed a $1.2-billion (R20-billion) deal with state-owned PetroSA, appointing his company Equator Holdings to fund and build pipelines and other infrastructure for a future gas industry. Four months later though, Equator was liquidated for failing to pay a R725 000 debt to a First Division soccer player. “This discovery,” he later told the Johannesburg H...