25 April 2021 - 05:05 By HILARY JOFFE
Last year mining giant Rio Tinto s then CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques and two executives were forced out by an investor backlash over the company s destruction of Aboriginal people s sacred sites in Australia to expand its flagship iron ore mine. Last month Rio Tinto s chair, Simon Thompson, took the fall for the fiasco too, saying he would step down in the next year.
Don t hold your breath for anything like that in SA. Chairs and boards of SA s big companies have it easy when it comes to hiring and firing.
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MDC-Alliance legislators yesterday demanded that they be allocated farms under the historic land reform, despite the opposition party consistently denouncing the programme at home and abroad for the last two decades.
The lawmakers told the National Assembly during the ministerial question session that most of them had applied for land, but none had been allocated farms.
Government sharply accelerated land reform in 2000, bringing the bulk of private rural land into State-ownership with the aim of reallocating it on lease, to address inherited colonial land imbalances, to ensure that all land was productively farmed, and to allow the Government to control the creation of over-large estates.
Daniel Mminele's departure follows a long history of abrupt exits at Absa. It has also shined a spotlight again on the strategic support of black executives in corporate SA.
Absa CEOâs resignation lamented
By Ntombi Nkosi
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Johannesburg - Absa confirmed on Tuesday that it had differences of opinion with departing group chief executive Daniel Mminele in their working relationship.
Mmineleâs departure has raised questions around the stability of the bank going forward.
Speaking to Independent Media on Tuesday, the Black Management Forum (BMF) said it would engage with the board of Absa to obtain further information and to get a more complete idea of what had actually transpired.
âThe Absa Group board and the group chief executive, Daniel Mminele have come to an agreement pursuant to which he has stepped down as a director and group chief executive and will be leaving the group with effect from April 30, 2021. The parties have not managed to achieve alignment in relation to the groupâs strategy and the culture transformation journey,â said Absa Groupâs head of media relations, Phumza Macanda.
Was Absaâs Daniel Mminele the victim of a âcorporate cliffâ for black executives?
By Edward West
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FINANCIAL institutions with a culture so unique that senior black professions are unable to transition into it suffer from a lack of commitment to change, rather than being âstuckâ with a culture that cannot adapt, Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals (Absip) president Polo Radebe said yesterday.
âWhen institutions fail to adapt, it creates a corporate cliff for black executives that, sadly, accelerates their exits,â she said.
Radebe was responding questions about the growing number of senior black executives in financial services who have stepped down early, sometimes not amicably, such as Peter Moyo at Old Mutual, the resignation of Basani Maluleke as chief executive of African Bank, and yesterdayâs shock step-down of Absa chief executive Daniel Mminele, of which Absa said there had been a failure to see eye-to-e