July 24, 2013

Prudence Moime looks up from stirring a pot of corn meal in front of her two-room shanty in northeastern South Africa, and gazes across the surrounding rocky hillside. Just beyond her view, lies some of the world’s best platinum deposits.



She says she waits in vain for some of the money promised to her village by African Rainbow Minerals Ltd. (ARI), part-owned by Patrice Motsepe, the richest black South African and a beneficiary of the country’s policy to spread the wealth to blacks after the end of apartheid.

As former President Nelson Mandela enters his 96th year, recovering in a Pretoria hospital, his dream of widely distributing the country’s riches has faded. Discontent is mounting 19 years after his election, over how a tiny elite with ties to the ruling African National Congress benefitted from more than 600 billion rand ($61 billion) in so-called black economic empowerment deals.

Villagers say that in 2000, Motsepe’s people offered them an 8.5 percent stake in the Modikwa platinum mine on credit, promising to develop schools, hospitals, homes and roads in the hills of Limpopo province. While Motsepe today is a billionaire, the 80,000 community members still collectively owe about 158 million rand on their share.

“They promised to develop the village,” Moime said in front of her crumbling home, where a row of bricks serves as a kitchen surface. “Houses were never built. Roads weren’t built properly. We’re not happy at all.”

Moime, 30, says she and her husband remain without jobs and feed their family on a 560-rand monthly state child welfare grant. She and fellow inhabitants of the corrugated-iron shacks dotted across the barren landscape have no running water.

Modikwa officials say the company has spent 110 million rand on community development projects – including a 65-million-rand road, and recruits more than three-quarters of the mine’s workforce from the surrounding area.

“Sometimes the mining industry doesn’t get the recognition it deserves for a lot of the good, good work we do,” Motsepe said at a Johannesburg press conference on Sept. 3, 2012. “We can always do more. Our commitment to communities, to labor and to shareholders is without question.”

Companies made deals with African Rainbow Minerals Ltd. for business reasons rather than to just include black business people, Andre Wilkens, African Rainbow’s executive director and former chief executive officer, said in an interview today.

Read the rest of this story on Bloomberg.com.

Welcome to the results of corporate globalization

From the Hands of one Criminal into the Hands of another Criminal!
Some REAL Sharing of Wealth,or should I say Loot?

Silly people, we must love Mandela.

Nah, people are free to all the hate and envy or scorn and fear that they can muster up in their fragile human hearts,,,

that is true for all of 'us'

Could be hate.

Very well, could be a sobering look at who he really was.

we can always take a sobering look at who people 'are'

if we only choose to define who they 'are' by certain periods of their life,,

people are complex, they aren't all good or all bad, NONE OF THEM

hopefully, the aim for all of us (imho) should be to GROW by learning from and not repeating mistakes, and by building on successes

which I also consider to be Mandelas legacy,,,

but certainly, we make a choice to define people by their accomplishments or their failures

after one dies, most choose to use the former in remembrance of their life

Mandela did some great works, and was very impressive in his accomplishments, but he was no Ghandi for sure.....

Like the invention of the tire necklace?

Ghandi was no Ghandi,,he too had his own skeletons

and the necklace, alleoop, was not invented by Mandela nor Ghandi,, so IM not sure the relevance

I'm sorry, my mistake, it was Winnie. If she didn't invent it she perfected it.

Is that an admission that people (including the POTUS) are not always who and what they appear to be?

are you talking about that prejudiced British Sergeant Major?

sure, that's one way to interpret it

or also, people are more complex than 'good' or 'bad' or the details or moments we have access to

sure, if their name is GHANDI, MANDELA or ALLEOOP

What?