I don't normally appeal for help like this but you won't need to reach for your purse or wallet or make an EFT.

Over 15 years ago the Datakor Group was a significant force on the South African computing landscape. It included Unidata who represented Unisys in South Africa, Datakor Network Technologies to name but two.

Around the mid 1990's the pension fund of Datakor and other companies was depleted of funds by what is now known as the Ghavalas option. In the case of Datakor over R40m of funds was removed from the pension. You can google Ghavalas for more information on how it works and how it was possible.

The Datakor fund is now under curatorship and over the last five years or so the curator Anthony Mostert has fought a significant battle on behalf of the fund to get the funds that were removed, returned with interest. In the past few weeks he has recovered over R170m from one financial institute.

I was a member of the Datakor Pension Fund and some of us now want to put some pressure on the organisation that has now received the returned funds and took over some of the pension funds when Datakor was dissolved, to make a surplus payout from the fund.

This is where we need your help. We want to create a list of people who were members of the Datakor Pension fund and who would like to receive a payout of the surplus funds. You may have relatives or friends who were members of the fund. All we are looking for at this stage is for them to send an email to datakorpensioners@gmail.com with their details so that the list can be compiled. The more significant the list the more pressure. This is not going to be a quick process and there is no guarantee that any monies will be received but we have to try.

So go on do your bit for some digital pioneers who helped move IT technology through this country over the past 60 years. You never know one of them could be one of your parents. So think about those you know who may have ben active in IT 20 years ago and ask them about Datakor and if they know of anyone who worked there and forward them a link to this post.

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