In the fallout from the public battle between the Minerals Council South Africa (MCSA) Transnet chief executive Portia Derby, Kalagadi Manganese has terminated its membership with the mining-industry employer organisation.
In a letter to Mineral Council president Nolitha Fakude, Kalagadi’s executive chair Daphne Mashile-Nkosi states that the black women-led mining company has no option but to reconsider its membership.
This is after the council allegedly failed to consult its membership about Fakude’s decision to write to Transnet board chair Popo Molefe in a letter that called for Derby’s removal from the helm of the state logistics company, among other “urgent critical interventions”.
“This call for the removal of [one of a] few female corporate leaders is more than just a misrepresentation of us as members but goes against the ethos for which we stand,” reads Mashile-Nkosi’s letter, a copy of which was seen by the Mail & Guardian.
“Despite the matter not having been canvassed with the membership, we have taken note that had it been your intention to inform the MCSA membership about it, you would have done so.”
Asked about the Kalagadi letter on Thursday, Minerals Council spokesperson Allan Seccombe said: “The Minerals Council acts with a mandate from its members. We don’t comment on internal communications between our members and the Minerals Council.”
Fakude’s letter, dated 4 December 2022, states that the Minerals Council’s members “have lost confidence in the existing Transnet leadership team and we do not think that they have the capability to turnaround the current crisis situation”. Transnet-related logistical constraints have been blamed for commodity producers losing out on R51 billion in exports.
According to Mashile-Nkosi, the Minerals Council failed to inform its members of the letter, despite it holding a meeting a day later with the object of providing an update on its engagements with Transnet.
“We cannot but notice the deliberateness in both the failure to canvass the membership on such an important matter as well as the failure to inform the membership as an after-the-fact. The above, as other recent developments have also shown, clearly indicates that the MCSA is not representing our interests as a member,” Mashile-Nkosi’s letter reads.
The Minerals Council has declined to comment on the contents of its leaked letter to Molefe. Earlier this week, however, the Minerals Council’s outgoing chief executive Roger Baxter told journalists attending the Mining Indaba that he was encouraged by engagements with Transnet subsequent to the letter.
Also at the Mining Indaba, Transnet and Kalagadi reportedly inked a deal which will see the manganese miner sharing loading capacity at a rail siding at its mine in the Northern Cape.
Derby has hit back at the Minerals Council’s letter, saying that the organisation’s antagonism towards her stemmed from its opposition to Transnet introducing more junior players on its manganese export lines. “We have a perfectly good relationship with the mining companies themselves. The lobby body is a lobby body, I can’t hang my head on a lobby body,” she told Business Times.
The Minerals Council has denied that the letter and the actions it prescribed had anything to do with the opening of the manganese line to junior miners.
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