The South African billionaire rumoured to be an ANC presidential contender

Africa’s first black billionaire, Patrice Motsepe, is rumoured to be the top choice among some African National Congress (ANC) senior officials for the next party president come 2027. 

According to Rapport, well-placed sources said the ANC has been trying to convince Motsepe, the brother-in-law of President Cyril Ramaphosa, to enter politics for some time.

This would place him against current Deputy President Paul Mashatile, whose ANC presidential campaign is seen to be widely supported by the party’s radical economic transformation (RET) faction.

He is not a politician, but one of the biggest financial supporters of various national parties, including bankrolling tens of millions of rands for the ANC. 

He is known as Africa’s first black billionaire, making it on the Forbes list by 2008. 

The dark horse for the next ANC president was born in Soweto in 1962, the son of Augustine Motsepe, a chief of the Bakgatla ba Mmakau Batswana people.

His name was derived from that of statesman Patrice Lumumba, first prime minister of the Independent Republic of Congo.

Motsepe said that his interest in business began when he was a child. “My grandfather was an entrepreneur. He owned a business in a rural area where even today there is no running water,” Motsepe explained in an interview for his and his wife’s charity, the Motsepe Foundation. 

His father was also an entrepreneur, and Motsepe worked in his father’s shop from the age of 6. “So I grew up in an entrepreneurial family,” he said. 

He realised at a young age that he didn’t want to spend his life working as a server behind a shop counter and said he began looking for a potential career, leading to his work in law.

Motsepe earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Swaziland, and then completed a Law Degree at the University of the Witwatersrand.

He became the first black partner in the law firm Bowman Gilfillan in 1994. He specialised in mining and business law. His experience in the mining industry would foreshadow his successful future.

“I enjoyed law, but I always knew that entrepreneurship- starting businesses, building businesses- was what I wanted to do.” 

He said that working for his father taught him two vital values that drove his success as a businessman: the customer is always right, and always focus on the bottom line.

He founded the company, Future Mining, which provided contract mining services to the Vaal Reefs Gold Mine, such as cleaning gold dust from inside mine shafts.

He went on to found AfriGold in 1997 and Modikwa Platinum in 2001. Motsepe made his fortune by investing in low-producing gold mine shafts and turning them profitable. 

AngloGold sold Motsepe’s company, AfriGold, six gold mine shafts for $7,7 million and allowed him to repay the debt out of the future earnings.

In 2003, Motsepe’s AfriGold then merged with Aumin and Harmony Gold. Motsepe became founder and executive chairman of the combined enterprise, renamed Africa Rainbow Minerals (ARM) – the company that made him a billionaire. 

Motsepe’s billions

African Rainbow Minerals was able to grow into a multi-billion rand enterprise through a further series of mergers and acquisitions. 

It expanded and diversified its portfolio, launching ARM Ferrous, ARM Platinum, and ARM Coal. 

Monique Swartz, Corporate Development and Head of Investor Relations for ARM, said that the success of the company has hinged on its ability to operate acquisitions as smaller, entrepreneurial companies. 

“The other principle of success for ARM, which worked quite well, was the company’s ability to partner with large organisations and draw on their skills to ensure that ARM was effectively able to optimise the assets which they owned,” she said in an interview with the Africa Business Journal. 

Following his initial success, Motsepe founded Ubuntu-Botho Investments in 2004 with the goal of building up black-controlled capital in South Africa.

The company has a 14% shareholding in Sanlam, making it Sanlam’s largest single shareholder and empowerment partner. 

This revenue has been partially invested in African Rainbow Capital, which positions itself as the leading South African black economic empowerment company. 

In 2017, Forbes placed Motsepe on the list of the 100 greatest living business minds. 

Motsepe and his wife, Precious, went on to form the Motsepe Foundation to improve the lifestyles and living conditions of the poor, unemployed, women, youth, workers, and marginalised in South Africa. 

With regard to the political sphere, an ANC official told the Africa Report that Motsepe was open to the idea of becoming the party’s next president.

“He wants it, but the question is: how will he do it?” the ANC official said. “He hasn’t really been active in politics.”

The extent of Motsepe’s career in politics has been his involvement in the Black Business Council, his membership in business advocacy and lobby group, Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) and his service as chairman of the BRICS business council.

However, Lobby group My Vote Counts found that between his three companies, African Rainbow Minerals, Harmony Gold, and Ubuntu-Botho Investments, Motsepe has donated R36.8 million to political parties in 2022 and 2023.

This includes the ANC, DA, EFF, Inkatha Freedom Party, and Freedom Front Plus. This makes Motsepe one of the top three funders to South African politics. 

“South Africa’s top political parties may disagree on almost everything, but they have one thing in common: all of them eat out of the same funding bowl,” the lobby group said.