Patrons

Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa

Cyril Ramaphosa is a business and political leader whose achievements in the apartheid era centred on building the powerful National Union of Mineworkers and who played a critical role in shaping the constitution of a free South Africa. Mr Ramaphosa is Deputy Chairperson of the National Planning Commission and current President of South Africa. He is a lawyer by profession and holds multiple corporate positions, especially in the mining, financial, paper and construction sectors. He is Executive Chairman of both the Shanduka Group and Millennium Consolidated Investments.

Bobby Godsell, Former Chairman of Business Leadership South Africa

Retired from the corporate world, Bobby Godsell is a member of the National Planning Commission and former Chairman of Business Leadership South Africa. He serves as a non-executive director of Anglo-American, retaining a connection to the gold mining industry in which he played a range of management and executive roles over a period of more than three decades. Mr Godsell is credited with developing a constructive approach to trade union relations in the mining industry within the conflicted political environment of the 1980s and 1990s and influencing the national labour relations landscape of that era and beyond.

James Motlatsi, former President of the National Union of Mineworkers

James Motlatsi, now immersed in the world of business, is more widely known as a veteran of the labour movement. He was the first President of the National Union of Mineworkers, formed in 1982, and a founder member of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Currently, Mr Motlatsi is CEO of TEBA Ltd and has served on the boards of a range of corporations, trusts and development bodies. He was awarded the Order of Ramaseatsana by the King of Lesotho in 2001.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, former Deputy President of South Africa

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is Executive Director of UN Women. She was also the first woman to hold the position of Deputy President of South Africa. Her early work experience was in the areas of education and youth development in South Africa and abroad. She was elected to South Africa’s first democratic Parliament in 1994 and served as Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry and Minister of Minerals and Energy before being appointed Deputy President in 2005. She is the founder of the Umlambo Foundation which focuses on improving the performance of public schools in rural and impoverished areas.