Under fire from all sides, Tony Leon’s lobbying firm has zipped its lips.

Resolve Communications told IOL this week it is done answering the growing list of politicians accusing it of using its DA connections to open government doors for paying clients.

“Going forward, we will not be providing a running public commentary on any further attempts to impugn, distort, and defame the work that we do,” the company said.

“We have over the past two weeks responded at length to essentially non-allegations of non-wrongdoing.”

The firm described the claims as part of an ongoing campaign, for obvious political reasons, to weaponise, mischaracterise, smear and distort lawful conduct.

Its decision to go quiet comes as the list of accusers grows to include two former DA leaders, a former DA minister, a former Cape Town mayor and president Cyril Ramaphosa, who says the allegations smack of state capture.

The scandal has also driven a wedge through the DA months before the November local government elections.

In its response to IOL, Resolve took direct aim at the most recent affidavit to surface in the saga, from a former senior member of former Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga’s mayoral staff, which forms part of a complaint lodged by ActionSA.

According to Resolve, the affidavit undercuts the very claims it was meant to support.

“No express instruction was given to me to award work to Resolve Communications, to ignore procurement requirements or to bypass any lawful process,” the affidavit states, according to the firm.

“The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that this is yet another politically motivated and malicious attack, devoid of substance, on a private entity,” Resolve said.

The company also drew a firm line under questions of state procurement.

“Resolve has never been awarded a tender by any sphere of government in its entire existence,” it said.

“We are fully engaged with our legal team and will respond with full confidence to any legal process that might arise.”

The firm added that it had every expectation that the rule of law would prevail.

But an IOL examination of the firm’s track record shows the tender denial, while technically accurate, does not tell the full story of its dealings with DA-run governments.

Resolve was paid R658,000 in public money as a subcontractor on the City of Cape Town’s Day Zero drought communication campaign, appointed by the city’s advertising agency at R164,500 a month rather than through a direct tender.

Former Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille has confirmed the arrangement, and separately revealed that Leon lobbied the city on behalf of ride hailing giant Uber.

Sources with knowledge of the campaign told IOL the firm’s fingerprints were on the very phrase that defined the crisis.

“Resolve came up with Day Zero, they said it’d be amazing marketing tactic,” a source said.

“It did. The city bought into that vision. Everyone did. Resolve gained a lot of traction since then.”

The term went on to dominate global headlines as Cape Town raced to avoid becoming the first major city in the world to run out of water, and the firm’s stock rose with it.

Resolve co-founder Nick Clelland, who led the drought project, has publicly been credited with defining and developing the Day Zero concept and campaign.

At the time, Resolve defended the arrangement, saying the party political background of its principals should neither qualify nor disqualify the company from doing any work, and that Leon was not involved in the drought project at all.

The firm’s own marketing has long advertised exactly the kind of access now under scrutiny.

In a case study previously published on its website, Resolve boasted that a communications strategy for one client included meetings with “relevant senior politicians, party-political leaders, business leaders and analysts”.

The result, the firm said, was that it was able to “re-negotiate the legislation” to the client’s satisfaction.

It is that model, access to power sold as a professional service, that now sits at the heart of the storm.

The men behind the firm

Resolve Communications was founded in 2013 by Leon and Clelland on Leon’s return from a diplomatic posting, and operates as a specialist public relations, crisis management and lobbying agency with offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Its leadership reads like a DA alumni roll call.

Leon led the DA and its predecessor from 1994 to 2007, making him the longest serving leader of the opposition since democracy, before serving as SA’s ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

He now serves as Resolve’s executive chairman.

Clelland is a former DA MP and the party’s first national spokesperson, who later served as director of strategic communication for the DA-run Western Cape government before co-founding Resolve, where he was chief executive until 2018.

He was succeeded as chief executive by Gavin Davis, another former DA MP.

The firm’s current chief executive Paul Boughey served as the DA’s chief executive before resigning in 2019, and its chief operating officer is Loftus Marais.

Boughey confirmed in a radio interview on 702’s Clement Manyathela Show that Starlink is a Resolve client.

The firm’s client work spans global firms, JSE listed companies and industry associations, with reported clients and engagements including Starlink, Redisa, Uber and the Day Zero campaign.

Former DA leader John Steenhuisen set the saga in motion late last month, telling News24 that Resolve had used its proximity to DA ministers in the government of national unity (GNU) to seek access for private clients.

The most explosive claim involved meetings between Elon Musk’s satellite internet venture Starlink and communications minister Solly Malatsi.

“I was quite shocked when I found out Resolve was doing this,” Steenhuisen said.

Steenhuisen also said organisations represented by Resolve were among those calling for his removal from cabinet.

Leon responded by accusing his successor of using the firm as a scapegoat for the DA’s internal battles following Steenhuisen’s removal as party leader and his axing as agriculture minister.

Former environment minister Dion George then turned on Steenhuisen, confirming Resolve had repeatedly sought meetings on behalf of waste management client Redisa while it was in litigation with his department, but accusing Steenhuisen of himself pushing him to take meetings with lobby groups.

“His behaviour now is, frankly, ungrateful and dishonest,” George said.

ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont wrote an open letter accusing Resolve of conduct resembling a state capture racket and daring Leon to sue the party.

“Please issue the papers, Tony,” Beaumont said.

More politicians then came forward, with former DA leader Mmusi Maimane saying an approach was made to former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba during his time in office, which Mashaba rejected.

Ramaphosa entered the fray this week, reacting to the growing list of political figures who have alleged the company sought to use its political influence to secure access to government institutions and decision makers.

“That really smacks of the type of state capture that has been talked about,” Ramaphosa said.

He said the truth needed to come out.

DA federal chairperson Msimanga has denied ever being lobbied by Leon during his time as Tshwane mayor, but said the party’s federal executive will consider an internal investigation.

“We don’t sweep things under the carpet,” he said.

Msimanga has rejected the claims tied to his tenure, questioning the vagueness of the affidavit and why the allegations were only surfacing now.

The DA has maintained that it is not the party’s responsibility to investigate the conduct of a private company, a position that now sits alongside its own former leaders publicly accusing one another while a former leader’s firm stands at the centre of it all.

Political analyst professor André Duvenhage said the scandal had its roots in the DA’s leadership change earlier this year and Steenhuisen’s subsequent demotion.

“I think we need to start and make the assessment by the adoption of the new leadership earlier this year, when Hill-Lewis became the leader,” he said.

“Steenhuisen stood back, and at that point in time, he expressed his loyalty towards the party and the party leadership.

“But then we had the Dion George episode, and after Dion George’s resignation, we had Steenhuisen not performing within his portfolio of agriculture, ending up in a cabinet reshuffle.

“And as a result of that, they start washing dirty linen in public, and a lot of things are coming to the fore.”

Duvenhage said it was clear Steenhuisen had not accepted his demotion from minister to deputy minister.

“As leader of the party, he had a lot of info about the inner workings of the party, and this is coming out at the moment, involving a number of politicians,” he said.

Legal, but is it right? 

Lobbying is the practice of engaging government officials on behalf of paying clients to influence policy, regulation or decisions.

It is legal in SA and common in democracies worldwide, and Resolve has relied on this point, saying engaging government on behalf of clients, openly and on the merits, is how business communicates with the state in every democratic country.

SA, however, has no dedicated lobbying law, no register of lobbyists, no disclosure requirements for meetings between lobbyists and ministers, and no cooling off period preventing former politicians from trading on their political connections.

Political analysts said the saga cost the DA dearly regardless of whether any law was broken.

Policy analyst Reneva Fourie said that if Steenhuisen’s claims were true, it would mean Leon was grossly interfering with government policy through DA ministers.

“It would also demonstrate a complete disregard for government procurement processes,” Fourie said.

The pressure on the firm intensified over the past few days. 

ActionSA has lodged a formal complaint with the Public Protector, arguing that Leon’s standing within the DA may have created improper access to government for the firm’s clients.

The party has also written to the Speaker of the National Assembly and the chairpersons of every portfolio committee overseeing departments led by DA ministers or deputy ministers, calling on parliament to urgently investigate.

It has requested that the relevant committees summon the affected ministers and deputy ministers to account for the nature and extent of their engagements with Resolve and its clients, and where necessary summon representatives of the firm itself.

The ANC, the General Industries Workers’ Union of SA (Giwusa) and parliament’s communications portfolio committee have all called for the matter to be investigated.

ActionSA director of parliamentary affairs Jacques de Villiers said the intervention follows the party’s call on Ramaphosa to institute an independent investigation, as well as its complaint to the Public Protector.

“SA cannot afford another State Capture era in which politically connected individuals or firms are perceived to enjoy privileged access to executive decision-making while ordinary South Africans are left outside the room,” de Villiers said.

He said whether the allegations ultimately reveal poor governance, ethical failures or no wrongdoing at all, parliament has a constitutional duty to establish the facts.

De Villiers added that ActionSA will submit written parliamentary questions to every DA minister and deputy minister at the first available opportunity after parliament reconvenes.

“Parliament exists to hold the Executive accountable. ActionSA is determined to ensure that every available oversight mechanism is utilised until South Africans have complete transparency regarding these serious allegations,” he said.

Malatsi has told the chair of parliament’s communications portfolio committee that Resolve approached his office on two occasions, and denied that the firm facilitated any meeting with Starlink itself.

Starlink is not licensed to operate in SA because local law requires telecoms operators to be at least 30% owned by historically disadvantaged South Africans, a threshold the company has not met.

Leon has separately denied wrongdoing and indicated the firm is considering legal action against those he holds responsible for the allegations.

IOL