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Deep down a shaft
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Thebe Mabanga
Financial Mail
Friday, March 19, 2010
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For a company whose actions could have a profound impact on a range of far-flung communities, the African Exploration Mining & Finance Corp and its CEO, Sizwe Madondo, in particular, have chosen a bafflingly low profile.
The company has applied for prospecting licences in five provinces, including sensitive areas in the Winelands of the Western Cape, and environmentally sensitive areas in Mpumalanga.
This week, Madondo did not respond to calls or questions sent to him despite an undertaking to do so and his company’s communications division simply did not respond to inquiries.
The targeted area in the Western Cape is a number of wine farms in the Durbanville area. Martin Coetzee, an advocate acting for the targeted farms, says the area has been agricultural land for 100 years. Heinrich Schmidt, a Democratic Alliance MP, says the area had some tin mining in the 19th century while information from a prospecting study by BHP Billiton in the 1980s showed that it was not economical to mine the area.
Department of mineral resources DG Sandile Nogxina says the department would reject the applications, as they were made without consideration for the current use of the land.
Madondo has not responded to this claim, or whether he will withdraw the application .
The company is part of a stable of more than 30 entities within the Central Energy Fund (CEF), the largest being PetroSA.
Incorporated in 1944, it lay dormant for a significant period before being revived in 2007, when Madondo was appointed its CEO. Prior to that, he was the COO of the Strategic Fuel Fund, also part of the CEF stable. In the CEF annual report to March 2009, African Exploration is described as non cash generating and funded through a CEF loan. Its mandate is to support Eskom and PetroSA by ensuring sufficient coal supplies. Most of its projects are at exploration or feasibility-study phase. Its balance sheet lists assets of R33m and a R37m CEF loan. The company has also applied for uranium prospecting rights in the Northern Cape, and for rights in Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Free State.
But he won’t say a thing.
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