A good week for Bob van Dijk

Bob van Dijk, unlike others we could mention, knows what’s good for business: get out of Russia. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the CEO of Prosus has been looking to quit the invader’s neighbourhood. This week he found Kismet Capital Group, a bunch of Russian privateers, who, like Prosus, have interests in technology. Van Dijk offloaded his group’s Russian classified ads website, Avito (the biggest in the world, with 47-million users), to Kismet for about R45bn, which means Prosus came away fairly unscathed. Certainly better than being burnt by some metaphorical Himars rocket, as happened to Nissan and Danone.

Diamond dealer Louis Liebenberg will be familiar with an old SA vocation, gatkruiper. It neatly describes why he gave R500,000 to let Jacob Zuma pursue a private prosecution against two people who were just doing their jobs. Liebenberg also delivered two head of cattle recently to the Nkandla kraal. Now it emerges that Zuma’s latest benefactor is just an old SA racist who dropped the K-bomb all over a speech. Not that this would worry the Pietermaritzburg high court’s newest prosecutor. What’s racism between schemers when there’s half-a-mill on the table.