Sibanye-Stillwater’s founding CEO Neal Froneman, who is retiring in September, said he will remain a member of the government and private sector’s efforts to fight crime and corruption.
Speaking to Business Times on Friday after the presentation of the group’s financial results for the year ended December 2024, Froneman, who has led Sibayne since 2013, said retirement doesn’t change his commitment to the fight. He co-ordinates one of the workstreams of the Joint Initiative on Crime and Corruption — a partnership between the Presidency and business.
“As far as I understand, they want me to continue; I am happy to continue post my retirement,” he said.
Froneman said the initiative had achieved a lot in preparing and putting frameworks in place for fighting organised crime, and was raising money to provide skills to the directorate for priority crime investigation (DPCI) and the National Prosecuting Authority to assist in the prosecution of 20 high-profile cases identified by the DPCI.
All these activities get money-laundered and it ends up in the wrong hands, financing wars and so on. That is why South Africa got greylisted. If we can show some serious progress it can assist in getting South Africa off the FATF greylist and that will be beneficial for the country and impact crime and corruption.
— Neal Froneman, outgoing Sibanye-Stillwater CEO
The cases relate to money laundering and terrorist financing, two areas where South Africa was found wanting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) when it greylisted the country.
“This committee is focused on syndicated crimes, it is focused on money laundering and terrorist financing; it is not focused on car thefts or burglaries. We are starting at the top. We want to deal with the ringleaders in crime, syndicates, and so on.”
Froneman said money laundering and terrorist financing were usually financed through illegal activities that extorted cash from people. This included trade in illicit goods, illegal mining and copper theft.
“All these activities get money-laundered and it ends up in the wrong hands, financing wars and so on. That is why South Africa got greylisted. If we can show some serious progress it can assist in getting South Africa off the FATF greylist and that will be beneficial for the country and impact crime and corruption,” he said
Froneman said partnerships between government and the private sector were in the national interest, despite criticism from some detractors who mistakenly believed that business was helping the ANC through these initiatives.
“There was a lot of criticism that business should not be helping the ANC, as an example. We are not principally helping the ANC. We are helping the country in the national interest to solve things like load-shedding. That has been very successful and every South African has benefited from it.”
Business did not use the forums to interfere with government policy, and the state was also keen to hear ideas from experts in various industries.
“We listen to government, as business; we are not trying to change policies, we are not trying a different form of state capture, we are solving problems.”
While the national energy crisis committee had made progress in helping Eskom lessen levels of load-shedding, the logistics crisis committee still needed time to resolve bottlenecks, especially because infrastructure had not been maintained properly.
“Our country is very broken; it has been run down and mismanaged over a long period of time. It is going to take a long time to fix. You don’t resolve engineering issues overnight. Even Eskom.
“I think we can safely look ahead to another two years with very limited load-shedding, but if we don’t want to address the just transition, we will go back to load-shedding.”
He said it would take a long time to fix some problems, especially run-down rail infrastructure.
“There were poor decisions made in terms of purchasing the wrong locomotives, not having spares, and the ports having been run-down. That you do not fix in one or two years, and in my mind, even in five years. It is a decade of rebuilding.
“I don’t think ordinary South Africans realise how broken and run-down our country is. That is why if we do not step in now, we can never rebuild the infrastructure.”
Last week Sibanye-Stillwater announced that Froneman would retire as CEO in September. It named Richard Stewart, chief regional officer of the Southern Africa region, as CEO designate.
Froneman, who was the first CEO of the group in 2012, said he was looking forward to spending more time with his family.
“I have got to the age where I don’t want to work until I die. I will be 66 when I retire, and the board and I have been planning [this] for the past few years,” he said.
Sibanye said on Friday its losses had narrowed to R5.7bn in the year ended December 2024, from R37.4bn a year earlier when the group was hit by impairments due to lower platinum prices. Despite narrowing losses, the group parked dividends for the year.
It said dividends would be considered when commodity prices pick up again.
Froneman courted controversy in 2022 when it emerged he was paid R300m the previous year. With unions up in arms, he later explained that a large portion of the remuneration related to long-term incentives.
“My salary is only a very small portion of that and it was something like R28m. That’s a cash portion. But the bigger part is a long-term incentive and it’s not a cost to the company. These are shares, this is a cost to shareholders. This is something that shareholders have approved over a number of years,” he said.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.