14 December 2007 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Friend or financier? Paul Ekon is an SA businessman living in London, and one of ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma's best friends. He speaks to Carol Paton about Zuma's London road show.

How did you meet Jacob Zuma? I met him through my father, who was the estate agent who sold him and Nkosazana their apartment when they returned to SA. How often do you meet up? Every time he travels through London we meet for a meal - once or twice a year. Did you attend the meetings he held with investors in London? I spoke to some of the people afterwards. What did they say? They were pleasantly surprised. They said they found him pragmatic and a nice guy. What gave them a lot of confidence was his lack of animosity. One said that his most outstanding feature was that he accepted that he didn't know everything but was prepared to learn. Their focus was on crime, the economy and the debt that he will owe to the SA Communist Party. What did Zuma tell them about these? He accepted that crime was largely driven by non-South Africans and the lack of a coherent immigration policy. He explained it was not just whites who were victims of crime and said that maybe government was out of touch with how badly crime was affecting its constituency. He was also asked whether he would have a better policy on Aids and whether he would re-open the arms deal investigation. What did he say to that? He said that Judge [Willem] Heath had done a good job and he didn't know why he had been taken off the investigation. Someone asked him if he thought he was the fall guy. He said: "You said it, not me." Do you have a financial relationship with Zuma? We have no financial relationship. There are no deals; there has never been any request for money. It's a straight forward friendship. What business are you in? I'm a venture capitalist, based in Switzerland. I don't have a particular company. Every deal is set up separately through its own SPV. Why did you leave SA? I left after I had persuaded a number of friends to invest in a computer company but the person we had invested the funds with ran off with all the money. So I had to come over here and rescue the company.