The Public Investment Corporation is bumping heads with some black-owned businesses it has sponsored and is refusing to repent on a ruling made by the Supreme Court. Heads will surely roll.

First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

Magae Makhaya Housing (MMH) is a property development company that specialises in affordable housing. Its mandate is to increase property ownership by developing lower-cost units for Government Employees' Pension Fund (GEPF) beneficiaries. The fund owns 25% of the company's shares, followed by black-owned consortiums Sekepe Investments with 55%, Alchemy with 10% and Marobalo with 10%.

It forms part of the Public Investment Corporation's (PIC's) social infrastructure programme, providing funding to address the supply-side constraints to affordable housing delivery. The investment is envisaged to enable a steady supply of affordable housing units in various urban areas across the country.

It is also part of the PIC's unlisted portfolio called Isibaya, which is about 5.34% of total assets under management (and includes unlisted property of 2.61%), according to the asset manager's latest financial results.

Of its Isibaya portfolio, 33.5% of the businesses supported by this PIC cluster were declared to be in distress as of June 2020. This was according to a...