Mosebenzi Zwane's appointment as Minister of Mineral Resources in September 2015 was one of the most transparent acts of state capture deployment in the Zuma era. Having served the Guptas faithfully as Free State MEC for Agriculture — where he facilitated the Estina dairy farm fraud that channelled R84 million to Gupta-linked accounts — Zwane was promoted to a national ministry with direct relevance to the Guptas' mining interests.
The centrepiece of Zwane's DMR tenure was the Gupta acquisition of Optimum Coal Mine from Glencore. In December 2015, just weeks after his appointment, Zwane travelled to Zurich, Switzerland to meet Glencore executives alongside Gupta associates. The trip was not authorised as official ministerial business. The purpose was to pressure Glencore into selling Optimum Coal Mine at a price favourable to the Gupta-owned Tegeta Exploration and Resources.
The mechanism was multi-pronged. Eskom — under captured CEO Brian Molefe — applied a R2.17 billion penalty against Glencore for alleged quality issues with Optimum's coal supply. This made the mine financially unviable for Glencore, driving the sale price down. Simultaneously, Zwane used his ministerial powers to create regulatory pressure. The combination of Eskom's financial squeeze and DMR's regulatory power made the sale effectively coercive.
Tegeta completed the acquisition of Optimum Coal Mine in April 2016. Within days, Eskom pre-paid Tegeta R659 million for coal — an extraordinary cash injection that analysts suggested was necessary to fund the acquisition itself. The Zondo Commission found this sequence demonstrated coordinated state capture: DMR pressure + Eskom penalty + Eskom pre-payment = Gupta acquisition funded by the state.
Zwane also manipulated the Mining Charter review process. His 2017 Mining Charter revision included provisions that critics said were designed to benefit Gupta mining interests, particularly around "once empowered, always empowered" provisions and BEE ownership requirements that would have favoured the structure of Gupta-owned mining entities.
The Zondo Commission found that Zwane acted as a Gupta proxy at DMR, using his ministerial position to advance Gupta commercial interests rather than the national interest. Despite these findings, no criminal charges have been brought against Zwane specifically for his DMR actions as of early 2026.