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Durban – Schabir Shaik took to Facebook last week to speak about friendship and false promises, in a post that many believed was about his friend and current president Jacob Zuma. According to the Sunday Times, a 1,077-word message was posted on Facebook last week Tuesday by Shaik seemingly aimed at Zuma, who shared a much-publicised friendship with the convicted fraudster before Zuma’s election into office in 2009.

“One of my most profound realisations dawned on me, in a dark mosquito infested prison cell. I realised the one single mark that separated men from the boys, it was INTEGRITY,” the newspaper reported Shaik as saying.

“I found real honor (sic) amongst thieves in prisons, more than I found in the outside so called real world. In politics and in business!!! “I failed dismally in this regard. I died went to hell then to heaven and returned back home the wiser.

“This is what had pained me so deeply, once displaced my soul so further from me, left abandoned and alone … “What of that friendship said I, every night every waking day, those false promises, those Buddha smiles . . . Where are you my friendship now?”

Shaik however told The Mercury that the statement was not about Zuma, saying that he had been let down by many friends in life, and the message was therefore a “general statement”.

The Durban businessman, who recently had his parole conditions relaxed so he can work, also had words of warning for all members of public governance who were at risk of becoming “pariahs”.

“And most of all, to all those that wish to govern us commoners, remember you are the servants of the people, you are supposed to serve the poor and needy, the sick, the hungry and the homeless.

“You should be living a paltry life and not a life of luxury or in the pursuit of self riches. For I warn you, if you fail to do so, then you condemn not just yourself but your family and their children, you all will become pariahs and outcasts in society.

“Your ill-begotten gains will have no value. Your life work forgotten your name a starting note for a joke to every joker opening his or her show (sic),” he wrote.

The post has since been removed.

News24 was still awaiting further comment from Shaik at the time of publication. – News24.