South Africa’s Chamber of Mines on Tuesday announced that the CEO of Anglo American’s South African operations, Lazarus Zim, will succeed Kumba Resources CEO Dr Con Fauconnier as president of the chamber.
Zim will be the first black South African to serve as the chamber’s president in its 115 years of existence.
Harmony Gold CEO Bernard Swanepoel is to continue as one of the vice-presidents of the chamber and Anglo Platinum CEO Ralph Havenstein will become the second vice-president.
“It is a very humbling experience and I’m truly honoured by the confidence shown in me,” Zim said.
He said his election reflects the transformation that is taking place in South Africa.
“There is a tremendous amount of transformation going on — if you look at, for instance, that empowerment deals to the value of more than R50-billion have been concluded in the mining industry,” Zim said.
“Of course there is a lot of work to be done and there are challenges,” he added.
Fauconnier said during his annual review that the mining industry is unequivocally committed to transformation.
“Discriminatory historical precedent — legislatively decreed, but in hindsight conceivably not quite as ferociously contested by the business community and, in particular, the strikingly influential mining industry — guaranteed that no member of our country’s black majority, regardless of professional excellence or executive distinction, was ever able to attract the electoral support of high-ranking mining industry captains and assume the elevated station of president of the Chamber of Mines,” he added.
“That odiously engineered political hurdle will for the first time emphatically be eradicated,” Fauconnier said.
The election of Zim is a beacon in the history of the mining industry and represents a meaningful strike in South Africa’s transformation, he added. — I-Net Bridge