When the queen mother of the royal bafokeng nation strides through the foyer of the single-storey office block that serves as the legato (royal palace) members of staff jump to their feet and mutter "Mmemogolo" (Queen Mother), just as the Bafokeng have for hundreds of years. While she dresses simply in African print cloth, she has a regal air - and no wonder.
After her marriage to the last king but two, she was for more than 30 years queen of the Bafokeng's traditional rural community of some 300,000 people in South Africa's north-western bush. Now, following the death of her husband in 1995 - and of her two eldest sons - her 40-year-old third son, is on the throne. All of which makes her, in traditional African circles, something like the equivalent of a dowager duchess. And yet, given the kingdom's recently acquired multibillion-dollar fortune in platinum-mining stock, industrial grandee might be a more appropriate tag.
To the casual observer, the Bafokeng's homeland, a 1,200 sq km arid tract north-west of Johannesburg, is no different from much of southern Africa. The Bafokeng have eked out a livestock-based existence here for centuries, but only the doughtiest Afrikaners trekking north from the Cape in the 19th century settled here.
Yet the Bafokeng kingdom also happens to sit on a section of what awestruck mining executives now know as the Bushveld Igneous Complex, a two-billion-year-old rock formation that contains nearly three-quarters of the world's known platinum reserves. Mining companies started full-scale production here in the 1960s, but it is only in the past decade that the Bafokeng have benefited significantly from the area's fabulous wealth.
In 1999, after decades of legal battles, the tribe won from Impala Platinum (Implats), the world's second-largest platinum miner, the rights to an equitable share of the royalties from the platinum that Implats was mining on their land. Then, in 2006, the nation's investment arm, Royal Bafokeng Holdings, negotiated a deal to convert the royalty payments into shares - making it the largest shareholder in Implats. Its 13.4 per cent stake is the crown jewel in the community-based investment fund, which at the end of May was valued at R39bn (approaching $5bn, although the Rand exchange rate is volatile).
The Bafokeng are now one of the wealthiest communities in Africa, as the Queen Mother ruefully concedes: "People say we are among the richest in Africa. But it is an insult to Africa when you look how big the continent is and how small Phokeng is." Indeed, until recently the capital was little more than a few tin-roofed houses and a handful of municipal buildings.
Fortunately for the Bafokeng, the Queen Mother does not belong to the starchy school of ageing aristocrats. Nor does she appear to have a taste for the ostentation and luxury that seduce so many rulers who come unexpectedly into extraordinary wealth. With its orange-foam chairs and stack of magazines, her reception area has the no-nonsense feel of a dentist's surgery. As she outlines health and education initiatives, she comes across as more management consultant than matriarch.
Given the corporate structure he is imposing on the nation's finances, it's an analogy that would go down well with her son, Kgosi (the word for king in the local language, se-Tswana) Leruo. He runs an extraordinary hybrid: the Bafokeng are, in the words of one of his advisers, part tribe, part development agency and part global commodity corporation.
Until recently the second two were a pipe-dream. The Queen Mother chuckles when she recalls the opening of the mines on the Bafokeng's lands in the 1960s. "I was just married," she says as she conjures up a poor and repressive era when apartheid was at its height. "As for the administration of the tribe, there was just my late husband and an elderly man who was general secretary. I was secretary number two and typist.
"There were no women at the mines back then - just men, living in hostels. So when they saw a skirt they would shout. One day they shouted at me, and someone said to them: 'Don't do that. Don't you know she is the chief's wife?' And the men said: 'Ah. She is also a woman.' So you can see how far we have come. Women are now allowed on the mines and in the accommodation. The men work peacefully. And they no longer shout. Now," she adds with a hearty chuckle, "they stop when I pass!"
Now the centre of Africa's equivalent of a Gulf oil kingdom, Phokeng itself bears striking architectural testimony to the tribe's changed circumstances. The Civic Centre, the newly completed administrative headquarters, dominates the skyline. In a gesture to Bafokeng traditions, it is adorned with the nation's ancestral symbol, a crocodile with a closed mouth and a lowered tail - a local symbol for peace. From the top floor of the Civic Centre you can easily see the platinum smelters and mine-heads - the embodiments of the nation's wealth.
South africa had its diamond rush, which started in what is now kimberley, in the 1860s. A gold rush, which led to the foundation of Johannesburg, followed in the 1880s. Now, as those industries wane, Phokeng and the nearby larger town of Rustenburg are enjoying a platinum rush. The platinum price has surged in recent years - in early March it hit a record high of $2,252 an ounce - and with the hunger for other metals in the platinum group (palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, osmium), the tribe's prosperity is assured for at least the next 50 years.
Yet Mmemogolo is not resting on her laurels. In Africa, great mineral wealth has too often led to the enrichment of the few, as well as to conflict - most strikingly in Sierra Leone where in the 1990s a murderous civil war raged for control of the country's diamond mines. Tucked away in a remote corner of South Africa near the border of Botswana, war is out of the question in the land of the Bafokeng. On the other hand, the Queen Mother acknowledges, ensuring that the wealth is well spent remains a challenge.
Black Economic Empowerment - the official policy to reverse the financial injustices of apartheid - is ensnared in controversy amid a widespread belief that the main beneficiaries have been an elite with good connections to the African National Congress.
By contrast, the Bafokeng royal family's disbursement of its riches is increasingly seen as an object lesson for South Africa in how to transfer wealth to the poor. "There have been a lot of mistakes," says the Queen Mother. "But we have learned from them. As I keep saying: if we spend all the money what happens tomorrow? The platinum is not our wealth. Our wealth comes through leadership. That's why we have to be on our knees all the time to say: 'Please Lord, do whatever you do, but make sure we remain focused'. Otherwise, we could go back to where we came from."
A mile or so from the Queen Mother's palace is the entrance to Implats' E and F shaft. In the background the steady "fuush pup" noise of the giant ventilator system drones. Every few minutes it is drowned by the sound of the drill grinding into the stope (bare rock face). A dozen stooped figures flicker in and out of the shadows. Their daily task is to advance a metre into the rock. In their cream overalls, stumbling over fragments of rock and the twisted bolts and bars that have been left behind after previous blasts, they could be ghosts in some nightmarish vision.
The mine's manager, John Quinton (despite his English-sounding name, he has an Afrikaans accent), is quick to point out that Implats has worked nearly five million shifts without a fatality. It's an impressive statistic, but there is no denying that mining in South Africa remains an extremely dangerous job. A week after my visit, a lift-cable snapped in a gold mine run by the South African company Gold Fields. Nine people were killed.
Still, there are plenty of people who would rather take the risk of working underground than labouring at the smelter - a giant complex of blast furnaces outside Phokeng. With its clouds of sulphurous fumes and its giant ladles of hot, spitting molten ore, the smelter is as close to Dante's Inferno as modern man has perhaps come. Certainly, in the back of most workers' minds remains the fear that today could see that unlucky shift that brings a "runaway" - when the wall of a furnace is breached and molten metal gushes out.
Faced with the need for such technological wizardry to extract the earth's riches, many African communities have over the years submitted to the mining companies' terms. (Think of Cecil Rhodes, that buccaneering imperialist romantic, and his invasion of Zimbabwe.) The Bafokeng, however, have waged a canny and persistent campaign to secure a fair share of their land's riches - largely thanks to the good sense of the royal line.
The king coughs, slightly embarrassed, when i highlight the pragmatic tradition of his forebears. Kgosi Leruo is a retiring man. As the third son, he did not expect to inherit the throne, but eight years ago he became king, when, in quick succession, his two elder brothers died.
It was back in the second half of the 19th century, he says, that his great-great-great grandfather set the pragmatic course the tribe has since followed. When Afrikaner settlers displaced the Bafokeng, Kgosi Mokgatle (who ruled from 1834-91) dispatched the tribe's brightest young men to the Kimberley diamond mines to earn money so they could buy back the land. "I am inspired by that man," the present Kgosi says.
Lutheran missionaries helped the Bafokeng by holding the land in trust, and then advising them to hand it over to the government. The Queen Mother and her late husband, Edward Lebone (who ruled from 1956 to 1995), then fought a long battle against both the mining companies and the authorities of the so-called independent homeland of Bophuthatswana - one of the puppet states set up by the apartheid government.
Such states were designed to allow tribes to live in their own territory; in reality, they amounted to little more than dumping grounds to keep blacks off white land. In apartheid-speak, Bophuthatswana's authority ran over the Bafokeng land. Its last ruler, who was ousted just before South Africa's first democratic elections in April 1994, opposed the Bafokeng's claim to the mineral rights. In the 1980s he forced the Kgosi into exile.
Now, the Bafokeng face a new challenge. The history of post-colonial Africa is littered with stories of tribes and countries falling prey to the "resource curse" and seeing wealth that could have bettered the lives of many being appropriated by the few. The shack-lined road which runs over Bafokeng land from Johannesburg to the gambling resort of Sun City proves how many have yet to benefit from the new riches.
Kgosi Leruo is the first to concede the need to manage the money carefully and to diversify from platinum so that the money does not run out with the depletion of the reef. His advisers cautiously suggest that the saga offers a double lesson: for South Africa, a lesson in how to address the controversial issue of Black Economic Empowerment; for the rest of Africa - indeed, for the rest of the world - a lesson in how communities handle vast riches.
John Quinton recalls with admiration how the Kgosi paid a visit to a mine after his succession to the throne in 2000 - and emerged saying he had to ensure the nation diversified so its wealth did not disappear once the platinum ran out. "He said they must not have all their eggs in one basket," recalls Quinton. "I thought 'at least someone has his head screwed on'."
The Kgosi's vision is simple: if the tribe relies solely on its income from platinum it will be ill-prepared for the day supplies run out. The challenge facing the 36th Kgosi and the Queen Mother is to look decades ahead, to a time when the platinum mines and smelters stand idle. What will the Bafokeng turn to then?
The Kgosi has recently unveiled a 30-year "masterplan" aimed at reducing the community's financial dependence on mining from its current level of about 80 per cent, to about 60 per cent. "We don't want to be a Dubai or a Singapore," he says. "We want to be a self-sufficient community, economically, in health and education, with as many people as possible gainfully employed. Platinum mining will be around for the next 40-50 years, maybe 70 years, but in that time so many things could happen. The demand for the metal could change. So we aren't waiting for it to run out."
In 2004, to oversee the drive to diversify, the Kgosi recruited Niall Carroll, a courteous and highly-regarded financier from Deutsche Bank who had worked closely with the Bafokeng on a number of deals. Carroll swiftly consolidated the different arms of the community's investment vehicle, and two years ago helped steer the negotiations that led to the landmark deal with Implats under which the Bafokeng acquired their shareholding. Against a background of controversy over the narrow group of black business people who have benefited from Black Economic Empowerment, the deal was widely hailed as a model transaction.
But diversification is proving a greater challenge, not least because of the soaring platinum price, which means that ever greater efforts are required to counterbalance the Bafokeng's growing income from mining. The Kgosi aspires to move into telecoms, financial services, oil and gas, and infrastructure. In late 2007, in the most eye-catching move so far, Royal Bafokeng Holdings almost acquired a majority stake in Mutual and Federal, South Africa's largest short-term insurer (the talks collapsed over price). Recently, Royal Bafokeng Holdings again grabbed South Africa's business headlines when it was chosen, ahead of a number of politically connected consortia, as a Black Economic Empowerment partner for Vodacom, the country's biggest mobile phone operator.
The precise terms of the deal have not been published, but Royal Bafokeng Holdings is the senior partner of two groupings that are to share 45 per cent of a R7.5bn ($1.01bn) deal. It is the tribe's first foray into telecoms - a small start down a long road to broadening the Bafokeng's interests beyond platinum. "In some ways the diversification strategy has been a dismal failure," says Carroll. "But it's been a nice problem to have. As fast as we try to buy something, the price of platinum goes up. We could clearly swing this around tomorrow, just by selling some stock. Ultimately we are in the wealth creation game and we are not going to sacrifice wealth creation opportunities just for diversification. It is not a straitjacket or ideology."
But while the kgosi worries about how to ensure the bafokeng's prosperity far into the future, more immediate challenges are pressing. Public pressure is mounting for a swifter and more obvious disbursement of the nation's wealth. Phokeng may be booming but parts of the Bafokeng's homeland remain very poor, even as the expectation grows - fuelled by the get-rich-quick ethos that has taken hold in Johannesburg - that ordinary Bafokeng too will soon enjoy a more lavish lifestyle.
"People are saying our forefathers worked hard and bought the land," says Eugene Tsitsi, the Kgosi's former chief of staff. "So we expect benefits from this revenue - from the exploitation of the land." His principal task now is to appease the Bafokeng's 70 headmen who have traditionally provided the next tier of government after the Kgosi and who now bear the brunt of any popular resentment at the regular community gatherings.
"The expectations are getting bigger and bigger. That's what the headmen are concerned about. People are saying you've established some investment companies. Isn't it time some of the benefits begin to trickle down? It's a challenge. If we were to distribute this to every household the benefit wouldn't be as good as if it were kept and grown. That's the model we are using. It's a traditional model in place since time immemorial. People are getting anxious. We're living in times of economic empowerment. People refer to Impala as our mine, as our company. But we don't own it."
For the Kgosi, the expectations of his subjects pose a troubling dilemma: he must both deliver the benefits of the nation's wealth to its people, and prevent that wealth from being squandered by hasty and misjudged decisions. He is naturally anxious to avoid repeating recent mistakes that he says have led to white-elephant projects and faulty appointments, and wants to plan long-term spending on clinics and schools. He believes it his duty to deliver moral lectures on the need for discipline and restraint. But, as his advisers concede, this is a hard-sell to people with high expectations, particularly since slick political marketing is not his style. "When I speak," he says, "there's got to be something to show. Right now, I don't think there is much. It's easy to conceptualise - another to get things done."
The challenge is intensifying as growing numbers pour into the region from all over South Africa and neighbouring countries to find work. "It is a pressure and it risks overloading our infrastructure, our roads and water," says Tsitsi. "There are huge informal settlements near mines. The projection is that in the next 15 years there will be more outsiders than locals."
Mnoneleli Mfundisi, a stocky and bearded 35-year-old miner with a gentle smile and a ready laugh, says the region should prepare for a tidal wave of immigrants. He arrived in 2002 and is one of the many non-locals living in informal settlements. He left his wife and three children 500 miles away in the Eastern Cape to go in search of a job.
Mfundisi's experience, of course, is only the latest chapter in a story that has been told countless times in South Africa since the discovery of gold in Johannesburg in 1880 led to mass migration of young men to the "City of Gold". Mfundisi sees his family for just five days every two months. But his job in the "evaluation" section of a smelter run by Anglo Platinum, the world's largest platinum miner, earns him R5,400 a month - good money by South African standards. He has heard of some problems between the new arrivals and the locals, who accuse outsiders of stealing all the jobs. Such tensions led to murderous anti-immigrant riots in some of Johannesburg's townships in May, leaving more than 50 people dead and more than 30,000 homeless.
The Kgosi predicts that over the next 30 years the population of the Bafokeng lands will double to about 600,000 thanks to the influx of migrant workers. It is easy to see how his vision and his concern to carefully manage the changes his nation is going through have earned plaudits at a time when the ANC is accused by its critics of having forgotten the poor in its drive to create a black middle class. But the Kgosi refuses to be drawn into self-congratulation.
"We can build all these towers and monuments," he says, "but unless we have the people who are of the same mind and who are competent and professional... we will fail. The way I see my role is like this: I have a group of shareholders who are the members of the community who went out and brought in the money in the same way as an investor would put money in a company. From these proceeds I must now satisfy the shareholders by providing them with the goods."
It is an ethos that some in the ANC would do well to bear in mind.
