Classic Business

In this weekly feature Michael Avery gets up close and personal with South Africa’s business and political economy leaders, to uncover what makes them tick, keeps them up at night and keeps them going through the Covid storm. Michael Avery’s guest this week became the first ever female CEO of a major listed mining company in South Africa when she was appointed this year. She began her career in 1991 at Iscor as a trainee engineer. She found life comfortable in a hard and has worked for BHP’s coal and chrome businesses in South Africa (including as general manager of BHP’s Klipspruit Colliery), the Modikwa joint venture between Anglo American Platinum and African Rainbow Minerals, and AngloGold. She joined Anglo American in 2014 as Group Head of Processing, following six years at Lonmin, where she was executive vice president of processing while also leading the company’s sustainability, employee health, environmental and corporate relations work at various times.

And was appointed as CEO of Anglo American Platinum in April 2020 becoming the first ever woman to head a major mining house subsidiary.

Natascha Viljoen, CEO of Anglo-American Platinum, shares her passion for mining technology and the green hydrogen economy. We marked the 8th commemoration of the Marikana massacre recently and Natascha was head of processing at Lonmin at the time, and had to take over the communication and crisis response to the tragedy after it happened.

She shares how this has shaped her approach to leadership in the mining industry.

Warwick Lucas, CIO of Galileo Asset Management & Prof Raymond Parsons, from School of Business and Governance at North West University

Gareth Ackerman, CGCSA board co-chair and Pick n Pay Chairman

Herman de Kock, executive head of sales and service at Nedbank Business Banking

Dr Lester Goldman, CEO at Water Institute of Southern Africa (WISA

The president spoke about building a new economy in the wake of Covid 19. It’s important to bare in mind the most important change from pre-COVID-19 South Africa, was a lockdown-induced tax collapse of R304 billion. Additional funding from the World Bank and other international financial institutions only amounted to about R80 billion in additional resources, not close to the tax revenue deficit. The ban on cigarette and alcohol sales alone cost the fiscus R10-billion over four months in excise taxes, and created an extensive black market in smuggled goods This means that government is, for all intents and purposes, spending money that it does not have and has little prospect of generating through tax revenue in the short to medium term. Losses incurred by firms who are fortunate enough to survive the COVID-19 pandemic over the lockdown period, will be carried over to subsequent years. The sheer scale of the brazenly callous COVID-19-related tender corruption that saw political elites benefit while huge numbers of the populace starved, will further undermine tax legitimacy and morality. Tax compliance which sat at just under 70% in 2013, fell to 65% in 2019 and is set to plummet further, as middle class taxpayers who are facing suspended services or degraded service quality and rolling blackouts, bear the brunt of increased administrative prices, become increasingly disaffected and “gatvol”, which may culminate in a tax revolt. Hopefully e-toll resistance is not a portent of things to come. The precarious balance between the proverbial “rock” of procyclical fiscal policy and the “hard place” of debt unsustainability is a difficult one to strike. Did the president strike that balance today? Michael Avery got the reaction from Gareth Ackerman scion of the Ackerman retail dynasty and Chairman of Pick n Pay. Peter Attard Montalto of Intellidex Tony Ehrenreich, Deputy Parliamentary Coordinator of Casatu

& George Glynos, co-founder at ETM Analytics

Tony Ehrenreich, deputy Parliamentary coordinator of Casatu

Jeremy Sampson, MD of Brand Finance Africa

Prof Adrian Puren, head of the Centre for HIV and STIs at NICD

Craig Torr, founding director at Crue Invest