So that is it then. There’ll be a summit on July 7, followed by a few last minute tweaks, then, the South African government will have fulfilled its obligations to the people for the next five years. For the country’s hard pressed mining houses the hard work will have only just begun.
The third version of the Mining Charter – a voluntary agreement between state and industry to promote black ownership – is a well-meaning document that seeks long stability by giving the majority a stake in one of Africa’s most lucrative industries. In a nutshell it promises to increase black ownership from 26% to 30%; give a slice of mining right ownership to communities living with the dust of the mines and the workers who dig them. All has to be complete in five years.
The Mining Charter plans to transform the image of the industry for so long seen as an exploitative colonial operation where poorly paid black workers risk their neck deep underground for the wealth that Johannesburg was built on. It will not only benefit the workers, but also ensure that 50% of all mining boards are black so change has a chance to trickle down from the top.
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In many ways this document is a compromise. It fights shy of the 51% black ownership beloved of many other independent African countries further north. It also concedes to the “once empowered, always empowered” principle that the mining companies have fought for. This means that previous transactions on the way to 26% will be recognised even if the black shareholder sells his stake back into white hands at the end of the lock in period.
Yet mining companies are going to find it very difficult and expensive to comply with all of the above in five years at a time when the mines are struggling against rising costs and falling productivity. The empowerment transactions will carry a heavy cost.
Foreign investors are likely to look at the new mining regulations with caution. Capital is coward and it will always go where there is least risk. Long-term stability and righting the wrongs of the past ring hollow to the investors of New York and Moscow who merely want to do business. They just want to do business as quickly and cheaply as they can. If they can’t navigate the mining codes of South Africa they are likely to look elsewhere. Spending on capital projects in South Africa have been falling for the last five years.
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&#8220;We hope the changes from the summit will not be too massive,&#8221; the new mining minister Gwede Mantashe said on the release of the new regulations in Pretoria.
&#8220;This amended mining charter will bring no new investment, nor jobs, to the industry in South Africa,&#8221; says Peter Major, a mining analyst with Cadiz Corporate Solutions in Cape Town.
&#8220;If this goes ahead South Africa risks becoming like struggling mining nations like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Zimbabwe for the next 30 years.&#8221;
Food for thought ahead of the last minute changes on July 7.

Op:Ed: SA’s new Mining Charter too radical or good for investment?

His face contorts slightly as he, slowly, but painfully, returns through the murky mist of 42 years. His hands tremble with emotion as he relives horrific images lodged in the corners of his mind. The birds singing in the blue sky over the idyllic garden of his family home in Roodepoort, Johannesburg, contrasting with the moody, mean, streets of Soweto of yore.
Eighty-three-year-old Enoch Duma lived the slaughter of scores of schoolchildren on that fateful winter’s day in Soweto in 1976. It was his job to be there as a reporter for a Johannesburg newspaper and had his own car. He knew serious trouble was building. Many of the schoolchildren involved used to call him “Bra E” and held him in high esteem.
“I just knew the previous night the people were uneasy as if something was going to happen, some people didn’t go to work. You had people like Tsietsi Mashinini, Seth Mazibuko and other student leaders coming to your house.  I was always ahead of what was happening, “says Duma.
On the morning of June 16, Duma was out driving through the tense streets of Soweto and saw a big crowd approaching.
“They ran to my car Tsietse said: Hey! Soweto is burning – is it bad, it is very bad just stay ahead of things. Hide if you can hide because there is going to be trouble tonight. If the police shoot we are going to answer with petrol bombs. This was something new in Soweto.”
The mood turned ugly when news filtered through the crowd in Orlando that police had shot dead Hector Pieterson. A bloody killing captured for eternity by the famous photograph by <a href="http://cnbc.africa/news/southern-africa/2018/05/14/this-is-why-african-photojournalists-should-aspire-to-be-like-sam-nzima/">Sam Nzima</a> that he smuggled out through police lines to make the front pages everywhere from New York to Sydney the next day.
“When people heard it was Hector they were very angry. They armed themselves with Molotov Cocktails and started throwing these petrol bombs recklessly. They were just mad,” says Duma.
The birds outside tweet, incongruously, as Duma’s face darkens with the deepening story.
“I can still see the madness in their faces and their anger. They didn’t know what to do,” he says.
“I saw a burning body thrown into a dustbin. I couldn’t stand it I had to drive through. There were moments when I thought I wasn’t going to make it. It was difficult to see where the students were coming from. They were coming out of buildings with Molotov Cocktails and some carried dustbin lids as shields. Among the leaders were very young people. The real fighters were the little girls – they were ready to die.”
Among them, Susan Shabangu who spent months on the run in the clampdown that followed; like many of the survivors, she escaped into exile to fight the struggle and ended up as her country’s mining and social development minister.
It was an horrific chapter of a rich career that saw Duma the son of a Baptist minister, born in Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, work his way from reporting the courts in his hometown to working on a national newspaper.  He joined the Post in Durban through a friend, who was a reporter on the paper, called Duke Ncobo.
“The newspaper wanted a young cub reporter and suggested I should write two stories for the editor. He read them looked at me and read them and looked at me and said did you write this or did someone write this for you? I said: no. He said go to Mr Ncobo and he said; who said: I think the editor likes you!”
His first arrest came in bizarre fashion. Ncobo invited the young Duma to a party in a block of flats in downtown Durban to leading lights of the African National Congress including Fatima Meer and journalist GR Naidoo. An elderly woman living below called the police complaining of the noise; the police, who suspected the party was a front for a political meeting among people of colour, encouraged her to press charges. They arrested 27 partygoers including Gama and threw them in the cells.
The court case turned into farce. The elderly lady, in her 70s, complained that the partygoers had banged the floor above her as they danced. In court, the judge asked the lady to demonstrate the dance. There were titters in court as ushers cleared the chairs away and the lady did a high-stepping dance. The judge ruled she hadn’t made sufficient noise to convince him, yet Duma and his colleagues were held to have been a public nuisance.
Duma secured a job on the City Post, amid the bright lights and jazz of 1950s Johannesburg and arrived at Park Station with nothing but a suitcase. A van from the newspaper picked him up to take him to the newsroom buzzing with young journalists.
“You must pretend to be one of them, otherwise they will give you a hard time,” chirped the driver.
These were colourful and chaotic times for young black journalists at the City Post. A regular caller with stories was a young and vivacious social worker called Winnie Mandela.
“<a href="http://cnbc.africa/category/insights/winnie-madikizela-mandela/">Winnie Mandela</a>, she was very young used to come to the office and was very friendly with reporters . The gangsters respected Winnie,” says Duma.
Gangsters and guns were another part of newsroom life at the City Post. Gangs ruled many of the Johannesburg streets in the 1950s – the Spoilers, the Americans and the Msomi gang. Their leaders used to waltz in off the street with wide brimmed hats and long fine coats looking more Chicago than Sub-Saharan Africa. Often they carried small “baby brown” pistols, sometimes concealed in a bandage, to intimidate journalists for a number of sins. It could be to force them to stay away from their girlfriends or stop writing about them or start writing about them. Often a gun up the nose proved mightier than the pen, until one day.
“One day they came and they found the deputy editor having a meeting with the reporters. The gangsters introduced themselves and the deputy editor Henk Margolis, an American brought in to work on the paper, says: “Gentlemen can I help you?”
“They pointed a gun at him, Henk noticed this and was not scared. ‘If you think you can intimidate me you are wrong I was born in Chicago, so I have no time for small fry.’ That day we thought there was going to be a showdown. Henk grabbed hold of the leader and pushed him outside. That was the last time the gangs came to the office,” says Duma with a smile.
It turned out that gangsters with police uniforms on proved to be Duma’s downfall. He was arrested numerous times and ended up spending nine months in prison. He went into exile in the United States and with his wife of 56 years, Kitty, he was a prime mover in the divestment campaign – encouraging US firms to pull out of South Africa – that helped usher in the end of apartheid.
A system that stoked the fiery horror of June 16 that people who were there will never forget.

Soweto Burning, June 16: Enoch Duma recounts that fateful day spent in the eye of the fire and fury

By Chris Bishop, in Gaborone
What do you do when a company asks you to recruit an “excitement supervisor”?
This was the question that faced Jimmy Samuels, the country manager for Botswana and Namibia for South African black-owned labour brokers Workforce. He was speaking at the first day of a two day Strategic HR Conference in Gaborone.
“We went down to see the company to try to find out what these guys wanted. They said the excitement coordinator should be a person who livens up the workplace,” says Samuels.
“We went through hundreds of CVs and couldn’t find anyone and then we found a guy from KwaZulu who had won a wooden mike on the pop talent show Idols.”
The wooden mike is the booby prize for the worst candidate on the TV pop talent show.
“We got the guy in and we watched the Idols clip as part of the job interview. Gareth Cliff asked the guy what he did for a job and he said he sold drinks and sweets by the road in KwaZulu-Natal. So Cliff says: Are you a vendor?’ To which the guy replied:’ No I am a Zulu.”
It was that answer that clinched the candidate both the wooden mike and the post of excitement coordinator.
“We spoke to the company Shoprite the other week and they said the guy was doing really well and had livened the place up,” quipped Samuels.

How to hire an excitement officer

Sam Nzima was an African photojournalist that anyone who ever picked up a camera in search of truth and justice in this continent should aspire to be – fearless, smart and dogged. He took a picture that shocked the world and inspired a generation &#8211; yet he paid a terrible price for taking it.
Like many understated heroes he was a mild-mannered gentlemen who wore his eminence lightly. Not for him the bitterness of old age or bombastic pride about the brave exploits of his youth amid the fire and fury of Soweto.
In December 2014 I chatted to him and returned his warm handshake, as editor of Forbes Africa, as he told our magazine his engrossing story of the day he took the picture of the dying Hector Pieterson in the heat of the Soweto uprising on June 16 1976. “I got out from the house, the police had ceased firing, and I saw a little child falling down. There comes this tall boy Mbuyisa [Makhubo] and picked him up. As Mbuyisa picked him up, I went with my camera. I was also shooting with my camera, under the shower of police bullets. Mbuyisa was running to the nearest car, the nearest press car was our Volkswagen Beetle. I managed to shoot six sequences of him carrying Hector. My colleague Sophie Tema opened the door and they put Hector inside. Hector was certified dead upon arriving in Phefeni Clinic,” says Nzima recalling the harrowing scene as if it were yesterday.
Nzima risked his life to smuggle the picture out in his sock through angry police lines. He was even mindful to fill his camera with empty film so the police would tear it out thinking they had put a stop to his spreading of the truth.
His newspaper, the World in Johannesburg, didn’t even want to run it fearing it would spark a civil war; editors relented and put it on the front page. The shot captured succinctly the pain and terror of the day armed police gunned down teenage schoolchildren. It was a picture that swayed world opinion against the brutal apartheid regime. On the anniversary, every year, Nzima told us how he would kneel and pray for the lost young souls of Soweto.
The shot also wrecked Nzima’s life and put his life in danger.
“After two days I received a call from the station commander at John Vorster Square, he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. Percy Qoboza was my editor at The World. He advised me to stay away from the police if I don’t want to come back as a corpse,” said Nzima.
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Police effectively banished Nzima to his homeland in Mpumalanga in north eastern South Africa where he was to eke out a bleak living for decades. It took him 22 years to get the copyright of his famous picture back. Even then, there are photographers around the world, who have never set foot in Africa, who are doing good business selling copies of the shot for hard currency.
Awards came in, in latter years. In April 2011, South Africa’s then President Jacob Zuma awarded Nzima with the Order of Ikhamanga for excellence in liberal art. Yet Nzima was never lauded like many of his colleagues across the continent.
Nzima – despite lucrative offers – clung on to the ancient camera that took the historic shot that wrecked his life. He went to his grave in hospital in Nelspruit, in Mpumalanga, on May 12, with no intention of selling it, nor his soul.
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This is why African photojournalists should aspire to be like Sam Nzima

The fresh face of the case for investing in Africa beamed out to millions across the continent at <a href="http://cnbc.africa/insights/african-development-bank/2018/05/08/davos-africa-just-launched-need-know/">the launch of the first ever Africa Investment Forum</a>. The man behind it is on a mission with his two passions – encouraging the world to invest in Africa and getting his fellow Africans to grow food.
Akinwumi Adesina is like a breath of fresh air in the often stifling world of African leadership. He is smart, charismatic, speaks in quotable sound bites and loaded with international and government experience. He can hold a room, with style and a smile, sporting a trademark bow tie and quip for all occasions.
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“I wear it because it is sexy and cool to be in the agriculture business. You mustn’t forget that by 2030 65% of the world’s arable land will be in Africa,” says Adesina at the launch of the AIF, which will be held in Johannesburg between November 7 and 9.
Adesina has been first in the field for years. He earned a PhD in agricultural economics in the United States, but cut his teeth across Africa. By his own admission, he was happiest when treading the red African soil in gumboots.
As Nigerian agriculture minister he pioneered a large scale plan to get tens of thousands of his countrymen to grow their own food. One of the unintended consequences of the flow of petro dollars into Lagos in the 1970s was that Nigerians abandoned the fields and imported their food. This effort helped make Adesina Forbes Africa Person of the Year in 2013; his ascension to head of the African Development Bank followed in 2015.
Adesina is also rare among African leaders in that he appears to look forward, with a global view, rather than raking over the past. I have never heard Adesina talk of the sins of the former colonial masters, nor errant past governments.
“When I watch on TV Africans clinging to rickety boats trying to get to Europe that is not the Africa I want to see,” says Adesina.
“I want a new Africa that people want to come to and not move out of.”
Adesina also paints pictures with his public words and salts them with a little memorable humour. He relayed the story of President Paul Kagame out jogging one morning in Kigali. A young woman ran across to the president, only to be challenged by security; Kagame relented and it turned out the young woman merely wanted to say thanks for a grant from his government to go to Kigali Institute of Technology after which she opened a business that she had recently sold for $10 million.
“I know your president [Cyril Ramaphosa] here jogs too. He is a businessman too and maybe can help young people get on in business too,” says Adesina to laughter wearing a smile as bright as a Kigali sunrise.
“What we need to build in Africa is a landing strip for foreign investors.”
Foreign investors hope for happy landings in the era of Adesina.

AfDB’s Akinwumi Adesina: The fresh face of investment in Africa

The first ever Africa Investment Forum will sit down in Johannesburg to work out how to channel a large chunk of an estimated $111 trillion, that will be sitting in the world’s investment funds, by 2020, at low-interest rates.
This investment drive is the brainchild of the business-minded eighth elected president of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina.
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“There will be no political speeches what we want is transaction, transaction and transaction,” Adesina told journalists at the Sandton Convention Centre, in Johannesburg where the investment conference will be held from November 7 to 9.
“I know you like Vuvuzelas (football horns) in this country, so I expect everyone to take their Vuvuzelas out to Africa for investment.”
Adesina, the former agriculture minister of Nigeria, believes Africa is the world’s final frontier and wants to channel investment into power, roads, rails and ports to encourage more to put their money into the continent. He believes he can win over an often skeptical world investment community.
“We have to get rid of this false perception that Africa is risky for investors. We can convince these investors with simple truths.”
The conference will be held in South Africa’s Gauteng province the investment capital of Africa with first world infrastructure. The province, that houses Johannesburg, has 71% of all the investment in South Africa and creates 35% of the country’s GDP. It also accounts for between 8 and 12% of the continent’s GDP.
Journalists asked Makhura about whether investments would be safe.
“They will be very safe. We have strong institutions and an independent judiciary. We are back on track – we had a few problems with our institutions but now we have strong leadership sorting it out,” says Makhura
New President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was out looking for investors at Davos in Switzerland, in January, weeks before he took over the top job, has set his country a target of $100 billion in new investment.

AIF has just launched, this is what you need to know…

At a time when new President Cyril Ramaphosa is trying to restore faith and credibility to the South African government &#8211; another strong link with the far off days of pride, struggle and sacrifice, more than half a century ago, has passed into history.
In many ways Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who has died aged 81, reflected both sides of the struggle for liberation in South Africa: on the one side its stoic pride in resisting the dark forces of apartheid; on the other, the grim and often far from noble struggle on the streets of the townships against the last, vicious, kicks of the security forces.
There are two images -of Madikizela-Mandela making the clenched fist black power salute &#8211;  that sum up her defiant support of the struggle and her husband Nelson Mandela.
The first was taken on the steps of the Palace of Justice, in Pretoria, in 1963, at the so-called Rivonia Trial as he faced the death penalty on charges of sabotage. Madikizela-Mandela, fresh-faced and determined, held the salute in the face of police who had tried to intimidate her and even attempted to stop her wearing her traditional dress to court.
Fast forward to February 1990 when Madikizela-Mandela again made the same clenched fist salute as she walked hand-in-hand with her freed husband into cheering crowds outside Victor Verster Prison, near Cape Town.
That joyous day also saw the beginning of the end for the couple&#8217;s marriage that began back in 1958 and ended in 1996. Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison as a pragmatic negotiator determined to heal his broken nation; Madikizela-Mandela remained a flinty, feisty, hard-liner and these differences mixed with domestic issues, ushered the couple towards divorce.
Few could blame Madikizela-Mandela for her tough stance in politics. She was dragged through the mill by the apartheid authorities and spent more than 18-months in solitary confinement where she was forced to lie naked on a cold concrete floor. Police hammered on doors and searched her home, like clockwork, she was tortured by special branch thugs and her children were taken from her. When she was freed, the authorities banished her to Brandfort, a small town in the Free State, where she suffered years of isolation and intimidation, including the fire bombing of her home.
Madikizela-Mandela&#8217;s image was undoubtedly tarnished by violence linked to  her bodyguards from the infamous Mandela United Football Club. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission &#8211; the hearings that tried to heal post-apartheid South Africa &#8211; found Madikizela-Mandela to have been linked to violence in the grimy days of the township struggle.
Yet Madikizela-Mandela threw many of her latter years into causes that cemented her nickname : Mother of the Nation. She shrugged off criticism for failing to attend Parliament and being slow in paying rent to remain defiant until the end.
Madikizela-Mandela died in Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, the very hospital where her former husband fought for his life in a health scare in 2011, in the early hours of April 2. She leaves two daughters: Zindziswa and Zenani.

End of an era as #WinnieMandela – Mother of the Nation – dies aged 81

There can’t be many people who can say a rough day at work was worrying about a crazed gunman jumping from behind a bush and shooting you off your horse. That was how I felt on the trail of a crack-shot and would be assassin who wanted to shoot, stone dead, the Head of the Commonwealth Queen Elizabeth.
That white-knuckle ride through the wild, dense, bush of New Zealand’s West Coast , fording rivers and struggling up rocky hills, proved the genesis of a story that I bashed out on a rickety old typewriter. It won me an award and made world headlines for weeks.
We were looking for a 22-year-old armed robber called Christopher John Lewis who was on the run after knocking over a bank and post office. He claimed to be a Ninja warrior as well as a right-wing extremist and gun fanatic. In his first slip through police fingers he dived into a river to escape – apparently a Ninja-style way of evading capture.
My editors on the Dominion newspaper, in the capital Wellington, despatched me to the West Coast to report on the hunt. The photographer and I asked around and tracked down the four-man police sniper squad to a hotel bar and persuaded them to let us go with them on the manhunt the next morning.
So I came to grips with a horse – that I had no idea how to ride – from dawn, until dusk for a couple of days. Every half an hour, the police raised their telescopic sights, we dismounted and lay flat on the ground waiting for a bullet that, luckily, never came.  I was 24-years-old and living every minute as if it were my last.
In the end, Lewis got away by hanging onto the floor of a passing train, before jumping on the ferry to Wellington and getting another train to Auckland at the other end of the country. Police arrested him &#8211; believe it or not – when he gave a credit reference to buy a car. A woman vouched for him and then tipped off police and Lewis, strangely enough, for a man of violence, went like a lamb.
Back in the bush my journalist antenna was working overtime. We had been led to believe Lewis was a mere felon; yet the police sniper squad talked of him as if he were Rambo and the Terminator rolled into one. I spoke to each of the snipers in their off guard moments in the bush to glean what I could – surprising how people will tell you stories face-to-face that they won’t do over email.
It led me, with the help of the news desk back, to retired Detective Tom Lewis (no relation) who spat out the whole story from his new home in Australia. He had arrested Lewis, back in 1981, and drawn him out by flattering his ego, telling him how he had given the police the run around, which led to the confession about attempting to blow the Queen’s head off as she walked the streets of Dunedin on the royal visit a few months before. Lewis had used the helpful map of the Queen’s route, published in the Otago Daily Times, to draw his field of fire and how many seconds he had to get in a head shot. His first shot was clear as day, the detective told me, from a roof overlooking the street. It was only a couple of policeman who climbed onto that roof, to get a better view of the Head of the Commonwealth, who messed up Lewis’s clear shot.
“There is no doubt he could have plugged her from there,” he told me. To this day, I wonder whether those policeman know their vantage point could have saved the Queen and averted a change in the course of history.
Detective Lewis recommended that the gunman be charged for treason that would have brought the whole story out. Police chiefs in Wellington were horrified – the revelation would have made them look like idiots and could have ended royal tours to New Zealand – and opted to sweep it under the carpet.
That is, until I came along six years later with my, dogged reporting, poor horse riding and rickety typewriting. It is immensely satisfying to see, 31 years later, in this age of fake news and sloppy reporting, that every word I wrote was verified by newly released intelligence documents; even more so, because the police at the time tried hard to pour cold water on my story.
If it had been possible to Google Christopher John Lewis in 1987 it would have been a lot easier and undoubtedly I would have got more information – but I probably wouldn’t have got the story.

Guns and fear on the trail of the man who wanted to kill the Queen

There is an old joke that used to do the rounds from the lips of journalists in Africa that goes something like this.
President Robert Mugabe invites Kenya’s President Daniel arap Moi to Zimbabwe to show him the wonders of his country’s infrastructure.
“See that bridge?” says Mugabe. Yes says Moi.
Mugabe pats his pocket”
“Twenty per cent.”
The following week Moi invites Mugabe to Kenya and asks him to look across a river outside Nairobi with wretched poor people fording it in the rain.
“See that bridge?” says Moi.
“I see no bridge,” replies Mugabe.
“One hundred per cent,” says Moi with a pat of the pocket.
Now we laugh at these jokes because they’re funny and sadly because they have a ring of truth as they encapsulate the cost of corruption to Africa. It is the so called public servants who get the pleasure and the poor of Africa that get the blame. It is the people wading through a swollen river who pay the price of corruption. The people who profit from corruption usually spend their ill-gotten gains on houses they don’t live in and cars they don’t drive; at the expense of people who have neither.
That is why I was pleased when I heard the new South African president’s pledge to stamp out corruption in his back yard. He has an independent judiciary that will make it easier to get credible convictions to punish the guilty and encourager les autres.
Yet it’s going to be tough; Cyril Ramaphosa will have to see many of his comrades put behind bars in bruising, public, trials that are likely to open up wounds that will last a lifetime.
READ: <a href="http://cnbc.africa/trending/state-capture/2018/02/19/atul-gupta-challenges-south-african-asset-freeze/">Atul Gupta challenges South African asset freeze</a>
Right now, many of the people of South Africa are behind Ramaphosa and are sick of the waste of their country’s coffers through corruption. Cyrilmania appears everywhere; it may be many a moon before we see the opposition give the president a standing ovation in Parliament.
Well that is my point. Time is the enemy of politicians who want to make decisive change. For Ramaphosa needs to push hard, while his stock is high, to see the prosecutions though and tighten the gaps to make sure corruption cannot happen. He could take a leaf out of neighbouring Botswana’s book if he wants a model of how to control tightly pubic funds. The leaf may come in triplicate and signed by three people – but that is how Botswana guards its public money.
Overall Ramaphosa needs to move fast before the forces of corruption can organise and fight back. Corruptors are cunning people, that is how they get away with it for so long.

Why Africa should throw people in jail – quickly

AnnMarie Wolpe, the anti-apartheid activist who partied with Nelson Mandela and once tried to smuggle wire cutters to her incarcerated husband inside a roast chicken, died on February 14 aged 87.
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A memorial service will be held at Temple Israel, in Upper Portswood Road in Green Point, Cape Town on February 23 to the dignified activist who spent a lifetime working for liberation and education.
“AnnMarie had a very powerful presence. Warm, flamboyant and gregarious. She succumbed to a battle with cancer and emphysema,” her son Nic said.
Wolpe was one of a band of young turks in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, in the 1960s, that used to hold then illegal multi-racial gatherings. Here politics was mixed with a little drinking and dancing. It was at one of these parties that Wolpe met the young, sharp-suited, Mandela for the first time. She recounted the tale for the documentaries: Liliesleaf – the Untold Story and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPmey2oS4o4">Nelson Mandela and Beast Called Business</a> that I made for CNBC Africa.
“When I first met Nelson he was an absolutely stunning man; tall, imposing and just totally and utterly charming,” said Wolpe half a century later about the then young practicing lawyer.
“Nelson said when he used to go to court the white lawyers pretended they didn’t notice him. Now, it is almost impossible not notice a man of this stature and the way he walked proudly in immaculate dress.”
But these connections were to shatter her family following the raid on the underground safe house at Liliesleaf in Rivonia, Johannesburg in July 1963. Police arrested her husband, Harold, who was the activists’ advocate, and her lawyer brother James Kantor whom police picked up largely on the grounds that he was related to both of them. 
Police released Kantor but made sure they ruined his business and he went to an early grave bitter with the family and its political connections. More than half a century on you could tell that this hurt Wolpe.
“What do you say to someone whose life you have ruined…I’m sorry?” was her heartfelt response.
Her husband was thrown into cells at Marshall Square, in Johannesburg, ahead of an appearance in the so called Rivonia Trial where Mandela and his comrades were to evade the noose but be sentenced to life.
Wolpe was one of the activists who made several attempts to spring her husband and his comrades from police cells including the wire cutters in the chicken. In the process, Wolpe herself saw the inside of a cell and interrogation. In the end, a young police officer freed her husband by agreeing to unlock and hit himself on the head in return for money to buy a car.
Harold Wolpe fled in the boot of a car to Swaziland and then, dressed as a priest, to Francistown in Botswana where he took refuge in a prison for fear of the South African special branch snatching him. It took three scheduled flights – one crashed and another was destroyed on the ground – before he made it to London where he was to spend 27 years in exile with his family. Harold Wolpe returned to South Africa as political times changed and died in 1996. 
In London, AnneMarie Wolpe became a sociologist and a founder member of Feminist Journal Feminist Review. She returned to South Africa, with her husband, and worked at the Educational Policy Unit at the University of the Western Cape.

Farewell to AnnMarie Wolpe: The heroine of the struggle who partied with Mandela

In the Budget on February 21 the South African government is likely to announce the clear way forward for the on again, off again, nuclear deal that the experts say the country needs and the critics say will bankrupt the country.
Former President Jacob Zuma caused uproar, in his time, by announcing the nuclear deal.  The plan is to build at least 9600 MW of nuclear power with a number of stations around the country. Russia is one of the nations that South Africa is looking to for the technology. South Africa is already home to Africa’s only nuclear power plant, the 41-year-old Koeberg near the beach just outside Cape Town, which has an installed capacity of 1800 MW and produced its first electricity in 1984. Cape Town is one of the few cities in the world to be powered entirely by nuclear energy.
In Davos at the World Economic Forum, in January, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba told CNBC Africa that the deal was off the table.
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“We have excess electricity and therefore are not under pressure, for the moment, if you look at the excess power we have it is bigger than the biggest power station we have in South Africa we have right now, which is Medupi, which basically means we are supplying ourselves on a sustainable base into the future. When we feel we now need electricity baseload electricity generation that can be supplied by the capacity of a nuclear power station then we will have a discussion at that moment. But at the present moment there are no plans on the table for the foreseeable future,” Malusi said.
Yet the experts argue this is folly. Kelvin Kemm, a nuclear physicist and the chairman of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, argues that the country needs to build its power grid for the future.
“Right now South Africa appears to have sufficient electricity, but that is rather false impression.  Projections of some 10 to 15 years ago showed that South Africa should have been using much more electricity now than is actually the case.  The country is artificially using too little now, in the sense that economic growth has been held back, and the electricity shortages of a few years ago prevented planned industrial expansion,” says Kemm.
The cost is also in dispute. Opposition parties say it’ll cost the taxpayer a trillion rand. Kemm says research shows the price tag to be a mere R650 billion.
The new nuclear power plants will be built by South Africa and South Africans, in collaboration with a foreign nuclear reactor supplier.  A model, in which South Africa is a world leader, is the construction and export of a number of well-known foreign motor cars.  They are built by South Africans, to a foreign design, in collaboration with the foreign design owner.
No foreign workers will pour concrete and erect steel structures for the building of a nuclear power complex.  The same goes for most of the other functions in the building of a nuclear power plant,” says Kemm.

Why SA shouldn’t be too quick to drop nuclear from its energy mix – experts

South Africa’s new president Cyril Ramaphosa has compiled a hit list of top ministers he plans to recall as he settles into office. It includes finance minister Malusi Gigaba and controversial mining minister Mosebenzi Zwane.
New broom Ramaphosa – who promises to clean up corruption &#8211; is clearly trying to consolidate his new position by jettisoning loyalists put into cabinet in the last days of former President Jacob Zuma’s rule. Ramaphosa was sworn in on Thursday in Parliament after embattled former President Zuma resigned on February 14 at the eleventh hour.
[WATCH] <a href="http://cnbc.africa/videos/2018/02/15/ramaphosa-must-be-brave-enough-to-rid-cabinet-of-corruption-says-former-jse-ceo-russell-loubser/">Ramaphosa must be brave enough to rid cabinet of corruption, says former JSE CEO Russell Loubser</a>
A document, seen by CNBC Africa, is understood to be from the chief whip’s office lists ANC deployees to be recalled including: Gigaba, his deputy Sfiso Buthelezi; the luckless mining minister Zwane; energy minister David Mahlobo the proponent of the unpopular nuclear power deal; social development minister Bathabile Dlamini; police minister Fikile Mbalula;  minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs Des Van Rooyen; minister of state security Bongani Bongo; and minister of water and sanitation Nomvula Mokonyane.
READ: <a href="http://cnbc.africa/news/southern-africa/2018/02/15/zuma-finally-falls-sword-not-threatening-take-house/">Zuma finally falls on his sword: but not before threatening to take the house down with him</a>
The documents also contain a list of new members of Parliament to be sworn in at the Chief Whip’s Office in Parliament Chambers in 90 Plein Street, Cape Town.
The list, also seen by CNBC Africa, has former Treasurer General of the ANC Zweli Mkhize- who declined a deputy president nomination at the ANC’s elective conference in December &#8211;  is at the top. Mkhize is being touted as a replacement for Gigaba as finance minister.
Also on the list is Ronald Lamola, the former deputy president of the ANC Youth League; Rhulani Siweya another ANCYL member; David Masondo, an ANC member who tabled a motion, in January, for President Zuma to step down; Senzo Mchunu, the former KwaZulu-Natal premier who missed out narrowly on a top position at the elective conference in December; Vukani Mdabe, a former presidential campaign lobbyist for Ramaphosa; and Zizi Kodwa the former national spokesman for the ANC.

New broom Cyril Ramaphosa’s hit list

(DAVOS) The man likely to be the next president of South Africa took a few significant steps on the path to power in the snows of Davos, Switzerland. He spent a few hours on&nbsp; a charm&nbsp;offensive at a dinner in Davos with some of the biggest names in business in South Africa: Stephen Koseff of Investec;&nbsp;Peter Matlare of Barclays Africa;&nbsp;medical supplies millionaire&nbsp;Stanley Bergman; Precious Motsepe; Jacko Maree; Maria&nbsp;Ramos and South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago and Johannesburg Stock Exchange head Nicky Newton-King.
<a href="http://cnbc.africa/category/insights/world-economic-forum/wef-davos-2018/">FOR MORE STORIES ON WEF DAVOS 2018 CLICK HERE</a>
It was golden&nbsp;row of business names sat along the table and Ramaphosa walked it, with microphone in hand, smiling his bright smile and cracking jokes. He told them his dream in life&nbsp;was to be a&nbsp;film director and chided Kganyago as hebfor not &nbsp;Lestja for getting a top job at the Interantional Monetary Fund steering committee without wearing a tie to any of the meetings.
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&#8220;Ï don&#8217;t know whether he is trying to&nbsp;assert his rural roots in Limpopo or what,&#8221;&nbsp; smiled Cyril to laughter from the dinner party.
It is this light touch that could win Ramaphosa friends among the small group of people&nbsp;who control South Africa&#8217;s capital and appeared to be doing so. If Ramaphosa is to take a serious tilt at fixing South Africa&#8217;s spluttering economy he must have the support of the&nbsp;business world.
Friendly and avuncular Ramaphosa swapped seats along the long table so he could&nbsp;talk to everyone. It was more like a South African wedding than a formal dinner in Davos.
The talk among the table among the rich and powerful was that Ramaphosa was doing and saying all the right things especially when it came to stamping out corruption..
That was the starter &#8211; over to Ramaphosa for the main course.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8211;

ANC’s President Cyril Ramaphosa strikes out on the path to power

As US President Donald Trump flew into Zurich , in  Switzerland, the man likely to be South Africa&#8217;s next president flew out from the World Economic Forum in Davos. It was not the intention to miss Trump, Ramaphosa stressed during his visit to Davos, but it just so happened they missed each other.
Other African delegates to WEF said they were going to boycott Friday&#8217;s speech by Trump, but you could argue Ramaphosa had bigger matters on his mind &#8211; like the survival of the economy of the country of his birth.
Ramaphosa has every reason to be pleased with himself after a whirlwind week of meetings, with foreign investors, at the biggest economic gathering on earth. It went well according to the man himself and his Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba who claim hundreds of billions of dollars in investment &#8211; that was being held back by investors wary of corruption and political uncertainty &#8211; was now going to come flooding into South Africa.
&#8220;We are going home very happy with a bag full of millions of dollars worth of  investment commitments,&#8221; says Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa claims he will push his clean up campaign on his return to encourage more investors..
&#8220;Anyone found to have done corruption will find themselves behind the bars of a jail.&#8221; he says..
What a turn around for South Africa at Davos. A year ago many were having to argue the case for people to keep their money in South Africa; this year they have to be very clever with their timetables to fit everyone in who wants to talk investment.
&#8220;Everyone here.says we like what you are doing and keep going,&#8221; says Ramaphosa  with his trademark smile.
Ramaphosa has every reason to smile &#8211; for 25 years he has been a political nearly man &#8211; now on the crest of a wave of investor confidence he is on the cusp of real power.

WEF 2018: US President Trump flies in, SA’s Ramamphosa flies back to Africa- happy

(DAVOS) What happens to South Africa&#8217;s President Jacob Zuma now? That was the question on the lips of many foreign investors as they heard the South African delegation make their case at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
President Zuma&#8217;s chances of completing the approximately 18 months left in his second term as leader of South Africa have been in question ever since that December day when Cyril Ramaphosa succeeded him as president of the ruling African National Congress. This makes Ramaphosa a shoe-in for president should the ANC win the 2019 South African elections.
<a href="http://cnbc.africa/category/insights/world-economic-forum/wef-davos-2018/">FOR MORE STORIES ON WEF DAVOS 2018 CLICK HERE</a>
According to senior sources in the ruling African National Congress, in Davos, for WEF there is a good chance President Zuma could resign by February 7 the last day of the Mining Indaba in Cape Town leaving Ramaphosa free to give the State of the Nation address in Parliament on February 8 where he can take national policy by the scruff of the neck.
&#8220;The alternative is an impeachment motion in Parliament and that could mean the president could lose all his benefits and pension. We are hoping common sense will prevail,&#8221; says one source in Davos.
&nbsp;

What foreign WEF 2018 delegates wanted to know about SA

(DAVOS) Senior officials of the United States government say the world shouldn&#8217;t fear its America First policy and as part of this it plans to press on with the Obama baby Power Africa that promises to lift the gloom over the continent &#8211; even if it appears not to be a top priority.
<a href="http://cnbc.africa/category/insights/world-economic-forum/wef-davos-2018/">FOR MORE STORIES ON WEF DAVOS 2018 CLICK HERE</a>
President Donald Trump will fly into the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, with the biggest ever US delegation on Thursday to sell his controversial America First policy to world business leaders. It is the first visit by a US president since Bill Clinton in 2000; it is likely to be more significant and controversial. Clinton&#8217;s visit was seen as part of an international  farewell tour at the end of his term; Trump&#8217;s visit comes at the end of a controversial first year in power and protesters have taken to the streets of Zurich and a handful to the conference at Davos to express their displeasure.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross promoted the fruits of Trump&#8217;s first year that ushered in growth and said the world shouldn&#8217;t fear the America First policy as all it meant was US workers first and free and fair trade with the world.
CNBC Africa asked whether the US-backed infrastructure and energy building project would survive under the Trump administration.
&#8220;We have created 400 MW project in Ghana which is only a little over one per cent of what we have promised, but we are planning to go and visit Africa in the second quarter,&#8221; says Ross.
So the Power Africa project survives, but only just if the White House lack of enthusiasm is anything to go by.

Why Africa shouldn’t fear America First policy

(DAVOS) As Davos slides into its snowy fourth day (Thursday) there is the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good comes from the upbeat mood among many of the African delegates -especially those from South Africa &#8211; who are seeing the silver lining after years of fearing interest in investment in Africa was declining. The man likely to be the next president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa was setting out his vision behind closed doors here. Those who were there said it was clear South Africa is open for business and promises to crackdown on corruption.
The ebullient South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago was full of enthusiasm as he rushed through the media centre on the way to an interview.
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&#8220;A year ago I was here telling people in Davos to stick with their investments in South Africa. This year I do not have enough time in the day to fit in all the people who want to talk to me about investing in South Africa,&#8221; he smiled.
The bad was the reaction from Washington officials when I asked the question about what was to become of the important US-backed Power Africa project to close the massive gap between demand and supply for electricity in the Donald Trump era. The best investors on the continent will tell you no power, no business in Africa.
The question I thought was a fair one &#8211; linked to the lives of 400 million people and a huge chunk of the earth&#8217;s surface filled with vital resources. It drew a vague and detached response. Power Africa was also the brainchild of Trump&#8217;s predecessor Barack Obama and my fear was it could go the same way as Obamacare is going &#8211; into the bin.
&#8220;We have created 400 MW project in Ghana which is only a little over one per cent of what we have promised, but we are planning to go and visit Africa in the second quarter,&#8221; says Wilbur Ross the slow speaking,  United States Secretary of Commerce at a press briefing in Davos. A few hours later Nigerian millionaire Tony Elumelu, who is on the Power Africa steering committee, assured me  that the plan to build 30,000 MW of power generation &#8211; slightly more than the equivalent of the current output of South Africa &#8211; would be seen through by African investors.
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The ugly could be the reception for when he jets into Davos on Thursday. The word on the ground here is protests have been planned. A thousand people marched in Zurich in protest against his visit, on Tuesday and a handful tried to protest at WEF in Davos but were thwarted by tight security..
Many of the African delegates here say they will boycott his speech on Friday in protest against his recent dismissive and disparaging remarks about the continent.
It is likely to be a strange couple of days in Davos. The Wall Street Journal called it :&#8221;First America&#8221; meets &#8220;We are the world.&#8221; Trump has not had much time for the globalists of Davos and it is likely to be awkward to say the least.
Trump will be eager to push his story about how much the US economy is growing since he took over and will also likely talk about the current trade dispute with China. The US has slapped 30% tariffs on solar power equipment and washing machines from China to the outrage of Beijing which is likely to retaliate.
Trump could be questioned about his attitude towards Africa during his flying visit to this tiny ski resort in the Alps. The ugliest part of the Trump visit is that not one constructive word about the economic future of Africa is likely to come out of his mouth. The leader of the free world won&#8217;t be too worried &#8211; Africa should be.

Chris Bishop

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ANC’s President Cyril Ramaphosa strikes out on the path to power

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Why Africa shouldn’t fear America First policy

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Chris Bishop

Op:Ed: SA’s new Mining Charter too radical or good for investment?

Soweto Burning, June 16: Enoch Duma recounts that fateful day spent in the eye of the fire and fury

How to hire an excitement officer

This is why African photojournalists should aspire to be like Sam Nzima

AfDB’s Akinwumi Adesina: The fresh face of investment in Africa

AIF has just launched, this is what you need to know…

End of an era as #WinnieMandela – Mother of the Nation – dies aged 81

Guns and fear on the trail of the man who wanted to kill the Queen

Why Africa should throw people in jail – quickly

Farewell to AnnMarie Wolpe: The heroine of the struggle who partied with Mandela

Why SA shouldn’t be too quick to drop nuclear from its energy mix – experts

New broom Cyril Ramaphosa’s hit list

ANC’s President Cyril Ramaphosa strikes out on the path to power

WEF 2018: US President Trump flies in, SA’s Ramamphosa flies back to Africa- happy

What foreign WEF 2018 delegates wanted to know about SA

Why Africa shouldn’t fear America First policy

WEF Davos 2018: The good the bad and the ugly

News Tips

Advertise With Us

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