Mosima Gabriel Sexwale (Tokyo)

Ramaphosa a former president of the National Union of Mineworkers and Tokyo Sexwale (another politician turned tycoon) have been criticised for abandoning their working class roots...

Similarly former Premier of Gauteng Province and Chairman of the US$1 billion Mvelaphanda Resources Tokyo Sexwale denies presidential ambitions yet his Sexwale Family Foundation has beeen touring every province delivering wheelchairs and financing education and sports projects...

That worried contenders such as the former Premier of Gauteng Province Tokyo Sexwale former ANC General Secretary Cyril Ramaphosa and former Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa...

The planned deal won strong support from Tokyo Sexwale an erstwhile rival of Mbeki's and now a director of Batho Bonke the black empowerment company which owns 10 per cent of ABSA...

Glamorous entourage The politics-business nexus was represented by Gauteng's ex-Premier Tokyo Sexwale Chairman of Mvelaphanda Resources and a stalwart of the governing African National Congress; Zwelakhe Sisulu of Afrimineral Holdings (and son of the late ANC elder statesman Walter Sisulu); and African Rainbow Minerals Chairperson Patrice Motsepe...

South African companies including some linked to the veteran African National Congress businessman Tokyo Sexwale will move further into high-risk diamond ventures in the north-east while relations with De Beers remain poor...

Failing that Mbeki would prefer Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula to the activists-turned-businessmen Cyril Ramaphosa or Tokyo Sexwale; others in line include Gauteng Premier Sam Shilowa Limpopo Premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi and Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni...

More promise has been shown by Tokyo Sexwale's Mvelaphanda Holdings also a former property of De Beers and Anglo and by Patrice Motsepe's Rainbow Minerals (AC Vol 44 No 20) in a three-way tie-up with Anglo-Vaal and Harmony Gold (the world's fifth biggest gold mine)...

Yet in 2001 he survived an attempt by Mbeki loyalists to implicate him along with Tokyo Sexwale former Premier of Gauteng Province and Matthews Phosa former Premier of Mpumalanga in an absurd 'plot' to unseat Mbeki; it was Mandela who intervened and scotched the clumsy move...

Among the invited guests at the launch were African BEE heavyweights now in the firing line as 'fat cats': Mvelaphanda's Tokyo Sexwale Nail's Saki Macazoma Real Africa's Don Ncube Safika's Moss Ngoasheng and even Cyril Ramaphosa (AC Vol 44 No 9) once the then President Nelson Mandela's choice for SA's presidency...