GNU helps fast-track partnership on reforms, says Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman

The transition to a government of national unity (GNU) has improved collaboration between business and the state, and the benefits of its reform agenda will start coming through now, Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman says.

But he cautioned that there was still much to be done to create an investor-friendly environment, saying the only practical way to address inequality was through economic growth. This was not going to happen unless SA created the right climate.

“You’ve seen business confidence go up, you’ve seen investors being more positive, but our foreign policy is a detractor,” he said.

He did not elaborate on SA’s foreign policy stance except to say that one of SA’s largest trading partners had “put the brakes on”, and while business would not tell the government what its foreign policy should be, the existing policy stance clearly was not working.

Froneman jointly leads the crime and corruption workstream of the partnership that business forged with the government just over a year ago to drive economic growth. He was speaking to journalists after Sibanye’s annual ceremony to commemorate the 2012 Marikana massacre.

The platinum and gold miner embarked on a far-reaching renewal programme when it bought the Marikana mine from Lonmin five years ago, to acknowledge the wrongs of the past, as well as to engage with and invest in the community there.

It is also working with public interest organisations to take legal steps to bring justice and closure for the victims of Marikana and their families by ensuring that the state implements the Farlam commission’s recommendations. The commission identified several people who should be prosecuted for their role in the massacre.

Sibanye’s chief legal officer Lerato Legong said organs of the state had been invigorated by the GNU, as well as by the business-government partnership, and it was hoped the prosecutions would go ahead.

Business and government representatives met President Cyril Ramaphosa last week to update him on the partnership’s progress in tackling the energy, transport and logistics, and crime and corruption crises holding back SA’s economic growth.

Crime and corruption had been the slowest of the workstreams to come together, but the partnership has now zeroed in on two initiatives. One, with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), will establish a new digital forensics unit. This will have the specialised skills to extract and analyse evidence from encrypted data such as cellphones and laptops that can be used to prosecute those implicated in state capture.

The other, with the Hawks, is helping to provide the forensics needed to prosecute 20 priority money-laundering crimes. SA has to show progress on those crimes if it wants to get off the Financial Action Task Force greylist.

Froneman said the forensic laboratory for the Hawks was already operating; it was an existing facility established by the SA Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) that had now “on steroids”.

However, the digital evidence initiative with the NPA was probably still a year out, he said. But it would enable evidence to be extracted in SA, whereas now investigators who need to pull evidence off encrypted iPhones have to send these abroad to Apple.

“We have got to develop that capacity ourselves,” Froneman said. “It’s really high-level digital forensics that’s required.”

Deputy director of public prosecutions Anton du Plessis told Business Day last week though talks on the new unit had been going on for a while, it could be formally established only once the new Investigating Directorate (ID) was established as a permanent unit of the NPA in terms of the National Prosecuting Authority Amendment Act, which the president signed in May.

Great care has been taken to safeguard the independence of the law enforcement authorities, with the new unit being established as an independent entity under a board of highly respected South Africans.

The five-year-old ID, which had been operating as a temporary entity within the NPA to investigate and prosecute those implicated by the Zondo commission on state capture, became a permanent entity on Monday after the gazetting of the new legislation.

Froneman said it was frustrating for business that the wheels of justice turned so slowly, but he understood why these things took time. Crime and corruption had been estimated to reduce GDP by 10%, so tackling it was a significant mobiliser of economic growth. That was why it was chosen by the business-government partnership as a critical workstream, alongside energy and logistics.

Andile Sangcu, a former Anglo American executive who now chairs Transnet, said Transnet could not have achieved the level of impetus and progress it had done without the partnership.

But one of the biggest challenges facing Transnet was its broken balance sheet, which was a huge constraint. “It (Transnet) is an organisation that is sitting with a lot of debt and part of that debt is state capture debt, and to that extent we will require the assistance of the shareholder to give us some sort of debt relief,” said Sangcu, who delivered the keynote lecture on shared value at the Marikana commemoration.

joffeh@businesslive.co.za