Oilgate exposed the mechanism by which a state-owned company was used to launder money into the ruling party's election campaign.
The story began between 2000 and 2002, when Imvume Holdings principal Sandi Majali traveled to Iraq with senior ANC officials and obtained lucrative crude oil allocations from the Iraqi regime. This was during the period of UN sanctions against Iraq, adding an international dimension to the corruption.
On 15 October 2002 — the same day President Thabo Mbeki publicly launched PetroSA as South Africa's national oil company — PetroSA awarded Imvume a contract to supply condensate. The timing was not coincidental.
In December 2003, PetroSA made an "advance" payment of R15 million to Imvume on this contract. Within the same week — four months before the April 2004 general election — Imvume donated R11 million to the ANC.
When the Mail & Guardian broke the story in May 2005, the mechanism was transparent: state money flowed from PetroSA to Imvume, and Imvume donated to the ANC. The R4 million difference was presumably Imvume's commission for laundering the transaction.
The scandal revealed the fundamental problem with ANC-linked party funding: state-owned enterprises were being used as ATMs for the ruling party. This was before South Africa had any meaningful political party funding transparency legislation. The mechanism Oilgate exposed — SOE money → BEE intermediary → ANC coffers — was replicated across dozens of SOEs throughout the Zuma era.
Despite the evidence, no criminal charges were ever brought. PetroSA would go on to lose further billions through the failed GTL project, documented in the already-seeded PetroSA incident.