Cape Town - Proof of controversial media boss and businessman Dr Iqbal Survé’s widely trumpeted background is hard to find.

Survé is currently embroiled in a dispute with the equally controversial Gupta family over shares in Independent Media, South Africa’s largest English language newspaper group. In it he adopts the moral high ground in claiming, as his company’s website does, to be “one of the most influential businessmen and philanthropists on the African continent”.

Yet it appears that Survé may have fabricated a great deal of his background. In particular, there seems no independent evidence of his major claim to fame: that he was the personal friend of, and physician to, former president Nelson Mandela.