Johannesburg - Former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa readily admits that the black economic empowerment (BEE) deals would appear to be repeating the same names: himself, Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa.
Phosa is rebuilding his business career after his controversial stint as premier in trouble-torn Mpumalanga.
Now that Phosa is no longer in the limelight, he has been spared cutting newspaper headlines.
In September 2002, he attended the Anton Lubowski Memorial Lecture in Windhoek, at the invitation of Utoni Nujoma, the son of the Namibian president and chairman of that country's ministry of justice, law reform and development commission.
Raising concern about what he saw as white-owned media abusing constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, Nujoma asked Phosa what to do about the so-called abuses.
Phosa replied: "The fact of the matter is that in a democracy we have to be criticised to the extent that you become fair game."
He referred to misleading headlines about him in South African newspapers while he was premier.
When an elephant that shared his name died, one newspaper headlined the story "Phosa dies". And when he visited a prison as part of his work, the heading ran: "Phosa goes to prison".
He admits that his business involvement seems to be with the medium players rather than the large ones, like those of Ramaphosa and Sexwale.
"Small business becomes big business tomorrow. You have to grow the small one into making money," he says.
He, however, adds that this does not mean that he will shy away from big business.
Phosa is chairman of Multisource Telecoms, the wireless telecommunications company, where he is leading a BEE consortium that will take a significant but yet unspecified stakeholding in the company.
He made headlines when he headed a consortium to buy three of Mondi South Africa's operations.
Mondi, a subsidiary of Anglo American, sold the Hazyview operations in Mpumalanga to Vuka alliance for R34.5 million.
The consortium included Phosa's Vuka Alliance, Hans Merensky Holdings and Treated Timber Products.
Vuka has interests in the consulting, motor, real estate, communications and transport industries.
It is also involved in developing a metals beneficiation plant with Implats and Bateman.
He is chairman of Zero Pollution, an unusual project, which has the right to manufacture and market cars that use compressed-air technology as a power source.
Phosa is chairman of Atos KPMG Consulting. He acted in an advisory capacity to the KPMG board before becoming chairman.
He is chairman of a BMW dealership in Nelspruit.
Phosa sits on the boards of Value Logistics, Command Holdings and Absa (Mpumalanga region). He also consults for clients in Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia.
Phosa readily admits that not all the projects he has been involved in have been a success story.
Take Skonkwane Holdings, for example. This was a rural hardware franchiser with Phosa as chairman. It has gone into liquidation, owing franchisees, suppliers and former employees R35 million.
In 2002, he returned to law and took up a directorship with leading Nelspruit law firm Du Toit-Smuts Attorneys, which was renamed Du Toit-Smuts & Mathews Phosa Incorporated.
Skonkwane franchisees were outraged when they were summoned for debt by the law firm. "It seems ridiculous that his law firm is helping to sue the guys who have been driven into the ground by Skonkwane," says one of the franchisees.
Phosa is chairman of African Legal Networks, a legal insurance to which members pay a monthly fee for legal protection, which he founded in 1998.
He holds two law degrees from the University of the North. He opened his first law practice in Nelspruit in 1981 and worked as a partner in the firm until 1985, when he was forced into exile because of an assassination plot.
While in exile, he underwent political and military training in the former East Germany, where he became regional commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe in Mozambique. He was responsible for all operations in the Eastern Transvaal until 1990 when the ANC was unbanned.
Phosa was one of four ANC members sent back to South Africa in 1990 to initiate the negotiation process with the former government. He represented the ANC at the Conference for a Democratic South Africa.
Then he was premier of Mpumalanga from 1994 until 1999.
Political controversy dogged him further when the late Steve Tshwete, then minister of safety and security, accused Phosa, Ramaphosa and Sexwale of allegedly plotting to unseat President Thabo Mbeki.
Tshwete later apologised following an official inquiry which cleared them.
Phosa is also the council's chairman at Technikon Southern Africa.
And he is chairman of the Mathews Phosa Foundation, which gives bursaries to children from historically disadvantaged communities.