John Anthony Copelyn (born 1949 or 1950) is a South African businessman and former trade unionist who has been a chief executive officer of Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) since 1997.
He entered the company as the head of the investment wing of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), where he was formerly general secretary.
He resigned from his parliamentary seat in 1997 to take over HCI, henceforth running it as a private-equity holding company, with his erstwhile business partner, fellow former unionist Marcel Golding.
[3] Not long after NUTW was merged into the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), Copelyn became its general secretary, succeeding Lionel October.
[2][3] In the 1994 general election, South Africa's first under universal suffrage, Copelyn stood as one of 20 candidates nominated to the ANC's party list by COSATU in terms of the Tripartite Alliance.
Copelyn and Golding resigned from Parliament in 1997 to run Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI), a holding company headquartered in Cape Town and publicly listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
[8] Explaining his ambitious approach to union investments in the mid-1990s, Copelyn later said, "There were too many opportunities to simply close one's eyes and throw up one's purist hands in disgust.
He claimed that he had been suspended as punishment for refusing to yield to political pressure at e.TV, HCI's television news channel: according to Golding, Copelyn and HCI executive director Yunus Shaik (brother of Moe and Schabir) had driving "attempts to push me out" after Golding refused to ensure that e.TV provided favourable coverage of President Jacob Zuma in the run-up to the 2014 general election.
[19][26] HCI is a major investor in British-based Impact Oil and Gas,[27][28] which in 2014 controversially secured oil-and-gas exploration rights off the Wild Coast of South Africa's Eastern Cape.