PATRICE MOTSEPE - LEARNER IN DISGUISE !

Today i decided to talk about an  iconic   African entrepreneur Patrice Motsepe, South Africa's richest man who created a giant mining group from low end mining business services .

 Patrice was born  on 28 January 1962 in Soweto to Augustine Motsepe, a schoolteacher turned small businessman, who owned a Spaza shop popular with black mine workers, it was from there that he learnt basic business principles from his father as well as first hand exposure to mining.   Mr. Patrice Tlhopane Motsepe began his business career as a child when he would wake early to help his entrepreneurial father by selling liquor to mine workers at his father's shop. he worked long hours as an eight year old  and this frustrated him  . he realized he had to choose a career that would keep him away from the tiring business, that is when he decided to take on law. He went  on and earned a BA from Swaziland University and a LLB from Wits University is Executive Chairman of African Rainbow Minerals Limited, ARM, a leading,  mining and minerals company, found in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

In 1994 he became the first black lawyer to be made a partner at the law firm Bowman Gilfillan, where he specialized in mining and business law before becoming restless. He then shifted to the mining industry. He Started a contract mining operation called Future Mining which provided various services to Vaal Reefs gold mine, now part of AngloGold. Unable to secure a loan, he ran his business from a briefcase for the first eight months.

Mr.Motsepe formed African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) in 1997 and acquired a number of marginal shafts at Vaal Reefs in January 1998 on favorable financial terms, followed by the purchase of other marginal shafts owned by AngloGold in the Free State.

Today he's the biggest single shareholder of the world's fifth-largest gold mining company. His firm, African Rainbow Minerals, controls 19.8 per cent of Harmony. His family trust owns 43.1 per cent of ARM.

Forbes  magazine racks him as 442nd richest person in the world and South Africa's first black billionaire with an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion dollars as of March 2012.

Harmony Gold Mining Company specializes in turning old digs into new digs. Harmony is South Africa's largest gold miner, after acquiring ARMgold in 2003, and the sixth largest in the world. The company buys mature gold mines with lagging production and turns them into low-cost, high-productivity mines. It had 2003 revenues of $1.2 billion and has 50,718 employees.