In 2017, because of its need to appease the SA government, a local company agreed to ‘conditionally withdraw’ its objections to the Chinese-funded Special Economic Zone in northern Limpopo. But on the day that Daily Maverick’s first article in this series was published, the company learnt that its association with the SEZ had rendered it toxic. Given its insistence that it played by the book on its R10.7bn proposal for an eco-industrial park in the province, the company has now decided to come clean with what it knows.