The Weekly Mail will celebrate its first birthday next week by hosting an historic meeting: the first direct encounter between the two most powerful men in the mining industry, Harry Oppenheimer and Cyril Ramaphosa.
In keeping with its aim of provoking exchanges about the future of South Africa, the Weekly Mail has organized for these two men to share a platform, meeting each other for the for the first time.
Oppenheimer, former chairman of South Africa’s two biggest mining houses, Anglo American and De Beers, and Ramaphosa, general secretary of the country’s largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers, will be meeting at a crucial time – while tense annual wage negotiations between their respective organizations are in progress.
The Weekly Mail will also be holding an exhibition of news photographs that have appeared in the paper in the first year of its life.
Among the exhibitors are some of South Africa’s leading photographers, including Gideon Mendel, Paul Weinberg and Trevor Samson.
The exhibition will be opened on Sunday night by leading foresign correspondent and former editor of the Rand Daily Mail, Allister Sparks.
The exhibition, at the Market Theatre Photographic Gallery will run for three weeks.