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Date : 04/09/2003
Source: Ministry of Public Enterprises
Title: Radebe: Appointment of new Board of Directors & CEO for Transnet


STATEMENT BY JEFF RADEBE, MP, MINISTER OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES, CONCERNING APPOINTMENT OF NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND CEO FOR TRANSNET, 4 September

Government is pleased to announce a number of changes to the leadership of Africa's primary logistics and transportation company, Transnet. These changes are wrought at a time when Transnet has just produced its best financial results ever and which will form the foundation of the new challenges facing the company and the continent as a whole. Transnet operates in a dynamic and financially charged environment. Amongst its many challenges is a need to align itself fully within the development requirements of our growing economy and to keep its finances in good order, driven by efficiency and motivated by a deep commitment to reducing poverty and strengthening our regional economy. In order to do this, it is necessary to adjust its focus from a singular concentration on improved performance towards sustainable growth and the expansion of quality service. Government, in consultation with Transnet's leadership, has therefore seen fit to reorganise the Board of Directors of Transnet itself and to appoint a new CEO of Transnet to succeed Mr Mafika Mkhwanazi who will leave the company after a sterling term of office at the end of December 2003 to take up his own private business interests.

If I may turn now to the reconstitution of the Transnet Board.

Government has retained the following Directors:

1. Dr Bongani Khumalo (Non-Executive Chairman)
2. Mr Mafika Mkwanazi, currently Group Chief Executive
3. Ms Sindi Mabaso, currently Chief Financial Officer
4. SN Buthelezi
5. FP Lembede
6. JH Rowlands
7. Adv N Gomomo
8. Ms Hilda Ndude
9. PA Thomson
10. Ms Tshidi Mokgabudi, and
11. Mr Mashudu Ramano
12. Dr Yvonne Muthien
13. Prof Fatima Abrahams

We welcome as new Board Members of Transnet, the following leaders in their respective fields:

1. Prof Kumar Bhattacharrya, CBE, FREng, MSc, and PhD in engineering production, will serve as an international member. Sir Bhattacharrya is currently director of the Warwick Manufacturing Group at Warwick University in the United Kingdom and is an economic strategist of note with an extensive knowledge of the airline business
2. Ignatius Sehoole is a chartered accountant by profession and the current chairman of the Black Chartered Accountants Association
3. Mr Jeff Molobela holds a BSc (Hons) degree in engineering from the Imperial College, London, and an MBA from the Imperial College Business School at London University. He has extensive experience in financial services
4. Prof Andy Andrews, BCom, MBA, PhD, is widely regarded as one of South Africa's foremost business academics who has also had a highly successful career as an entrepreneur and business manager. He is currently professor at Henley Management College in the UK and at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain
5. Ms Maria Ramos, who will also formally succeed to the position of Chief Executive Officer with effect from January 2004.

Let me pause at this juncture to reflect briefly on Mafika's contribution to Transnet and through Transnet to South Africa as a whole. Mafika has overseen consistent growth in turnover and profit for the period, with exceptional results achieved in the 2003. In terms of transformation, Mafika's tenure has witnessed the near achievement of employment equity targets, especially with regard to the appointment of women in senior management positions. Some 40% of procurement now rests with BEE companies and is still growing. The Transnet Foundation Trust has had a major impact in rural areas through social investment spending. Transnet boasts a proactive and highly regarded anti-HIV/AIDS programme. In terms of restructuring, he has presided over the successful divisionalisation of Portnet into the NPA and SAPO, the reorganisation of the Transnet pension Fund and others. Transnet has also extended its role in Africa, in support of critical NEPAD related programmes and development initiatives.

Against this impressive background, Mafika approached us in May this year with a request to consider his desire to pursue his own business interests in the private sector. It was with some reluctance that we agreed to this, and set up the processes to secure an able and dynamic succession to take Transnet through its new challenges. I would simply like to thank Mafika for the extremely committed manner in which he has devoted the last number of years to Transnet, and to securing the company in difficult times. We wish him well in the future, knowing that the private sector gains a considerable individual and that South Africa will continue to benefit from his work and vision.

Thus Government, after a long and detailed assessment of our needs, and the needs of South Africa as a whole, and noting the tremendous steps that have been taken since 1994 to stabilise our financial environment, has agreed to appoint Ms Maria Ramos as the new CEO of Transnet. Ms Ramos will therefore formally cross to Transnet to begin the hand-over period from 1 November 2003 so that she will be in a position to commence her responsibilities as CEO from 1 January 2004. In the meantime she will already contribute to the new era Transnet enters through her service on the Board of Directors with immediate effect.

Transnet's fresh challenges arise primarily from Government's development strategies and requirements that demand the integrated, rapid, widespread yet responsible roll-out of infrastructure across the whole of the transport and sector to ensure sustainable and expanding logistics capabilities into the future. Without this, it may just be that many of our efforts at economic growth and the elimination of poverty may end up just as drought-stricken as many parts of our country and continent, unable to yield anything of substance.

We are delighted to welcome Maria to the Transnet family. We are confident that her change management skills, her executive leadership and finance and treasury expertise, linked to her empowerment credentials, have been tried and tested beyond reproach in her time as DG of Finance and National Treasury, and across government generally. We have no doubt that she will apply these formidable abilities to the well-being and good fortune of Transnet down the line.

I wish now to ask the Minister of Finance to outline a few issues relating to Ms Ramos and the processes to appoint a new DG in the National Treasury.

Issued by Ministry of Public Enterprises
4 September 2003

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