Patrice Motsepe - The South Africa’s first black billionaire

Patrice Tlhopane Motsepe (born 28 January 1962 in Soweto) is a South African mining magnate. He is the founder and executive chairman of African Rainbow Minerals, which has interests in gold, ferrous metals, base metals, and platinum. He also sits on several company boards including being the non-executive chairman of Harmony Gold, the 12th largest gold mining company in the world, and is the deputy chairman of Sanlam. In 2012, Motsepe was named South Africa’s richest man, topping the Sunday Times’ annual Rich List with an estimated fortune of R20.07 billion ($2.4 billion).

In 2003, he became the owner of football club Mamelodi Sundowns.

In 2013, he joined The Giving Pledge, committing to give half his wealth to charitable causes.

Patrice was born to Augustine Motsepe, a schoolteacher turned small businessman, who owned a Spaza shop popular with black mine workers. It was from this shop that Motsepe learnt basic business principles from his father as well as first hand exposure to mining.

He earned a bachelor of arts at the University of Swaziland and a law degree from theUniversity of the Witwatersrand  and became the first black partner in the law firm Bowman Gilfillan in 1994, the same year Nelson Mandela was elected the country’s first black president. He specialized in mining and business law at a time when the new government had begun the process of promoting black empowerment and entrepreneurship. Motsepe soon founded a mining services venture to clean gold dust from inside mine shafts, implementing a system of worker remuneration that combined a low base salary with a profit-sharing bonus.

In 1997, with gold prices at a low, he purchased marginal gold mines from AngloGold under favourable finance terms. This was repeated in a string of deals and Motsepe set up a firm to begin buying the operating mines that would become the source of his wealth. In 1999 he teamed up with two of his associates to form Greene and Partners Investments.

Motsepe won South Africa's Best Entrepreneur Award in 2002.^[5] In 2004 he was voted 39th in the SABC3's Great South Africans(SABC being South African Broadcasting Corporation, the government funded state broadcaster). In 2008 he was 503rd richest person in the world, according to the Forbes World Billionaires List.

Since 2004, he has been a Non-Executive Director of Absa Group and Sanlam.

In 2002 when is it was listed on the JSE Security Exchange, African Rainbow Minerals joined with Harmony Gold Mining Ltd. and the company's name changed to ARMgold. Motsepe is also the founder of African Rainbow Minerals Platinum (Proprietary) Limited and ARM Consortium Limited, which later equally split ownership with Anglo American Platinum Corp Ltd. From 2005, Motsepe was Chairman of Teal Exploration and Mining Incorporated. Motsepe is also chairman of Ubuntu-Botho Investments, Non-Executive chairman of Harmony Gold Mining Co Ltd. and deputy Chairman of Sanlam Ltd. Motsepe has been president of South Africa's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He is married to Dr. Precious Makgosi Moloi and they have three sons. Motsepe's father named him Patrice after Patrice Lumumba, an African independence leader and the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

South African billionaire and mining tycoon Patrice Motsepe has joined Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge by announcing that he will give away half the income generated from assets owned by his family to the Motsepe Family Foundation.

Motsepe, who is South Africa’s richest black man, with a net worth of $2.65 billion by FORBES’ latest estimates, made the formal announcement on Wednesday at Johannesburg’s Southern Sun Hotel during a gathering attended by King Goodwill Zwelithini of the Zulu nation, South Africa’s Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, Rabbi Warren Goldstein and religious leaders.

Motsepe is the first African to join the Giving Pledge, a campaign spearheaded by Bill Gates andWarren Buffett to encourage the wealthiest people in the world to make a commitment to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropic causes.

In Motsepe’s statement, he stated: “Precious [his wife] and I will contribute at least half of the funds generated by our family assets to the Motsepe Foundation to be used during our lifetime and beyond to improve the lifestyles and living conditions of the poor, disabled, unemployed, women, youth, workers and marginalised South Africans, Africans and people around the world.”

While it is not yet certain how much this money will amount to, Motsepe declared that the bulk of the money given to the Motsepe Foundation will be channeled towards issues affecting South Africa’s poor, including education, health, unemployment and advancing women.

“I decided quite some time ago to give at least half the funds generated by our family assets to uplift poor and other disadvantaged and marginalised South Africans, but was also duty-bound and committed to ensuring that it would be done in a way that protects the interests and retains the confidence of our shareholders and investors,” Motsepe said in his pledge.

In a live video at the event, America’s richest man, Bill Gates, commended Motsepe’s decision. “It was a wonderful thing to hear how the Motsepes really, as part of their moral conviction as a family, believe in giving back. I want to congratulate them,” Gates said.

While Motsepe acknowledged that South Africa’s socioeconomic challenges were ‘huge’, and that his donations could not significantly deal with the country’s challenges, he affirmed that it is important for successful South Africans to help the less fortunate.

“We are not going to allow you to suffer alone,” he said.

Patrice Motsepe, 51, is South Africa’s first black billionaire. Born in the sprawling black township of Soweto and then trained as a lawyer, he became the first black partner at Bowman Gilfillan, a prestigious commercial law firm in Johannesburg. He subsequently started a contracting business doing mine scut work and went on to buy low-producing gold mine shafts in 1994, turning them around using a lean management style. His publicly-traded company,African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) has interests in platinum, nickel, chrome, iron, manganese, coal, copper and gold. He also owns a stake in Sanlam, a publicly traded financial services company outside Cape Town, and is the president and owner of the Mamelodi Sundowns Football Club.