Against the background of rising calls for radical economic transformation in South Africa’s mining sector, particularly transformation that benefits the country’s communities, grassroots shareholders of the black-controlled Ntsimbintle were last week able to celebrate the Northern Cape manganese mining company’s latest R300-million dividend payout – and also look to a new Kalahari manganese project on the horizon. Ntsimbintle, headed by struggle veteran Saki Macozoma who was imprisoned on Robben Island from 1976 to 1982, is a manganese mining and exploration business born out of South Africa’s own transformation in 2002, when the government announced it wanted to broaden ownership of the country’s strategic resources.
