South African billionaire Rob Hersov tells the mining minister to fix the sector or forfeit the country's future

Rob Hersov has written another open letter to Minerals and Petroleum Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe, arguing that South Africa is squandering a once-in-a-generation opportunity to capitalise on global demand for critical minerals needed for the green energy transition, and that the government's own policy failures are entirely to blame.

The letter, published on BizNews on June 14, 2026, is the second time Hersov has addressed Mantashe directly in writing this year. In January 2026, he published a similarly pointed letter accusing the minister of overseeing the managed decline of an industry that should be at the heart of South Africa's economic recovery. The June letter sharpens that argument, framing the mining sector's collapse not as a geological problem or a global market problem but as a policy crime committed against the South African people.

Hersov's core argument is straightforward. South Africa sits on some of the world's largest deposits of the minerals that the global green energy transition needs most, including platinum group metals, manganese, chrome, vanadium and cobalt. The electric vehicle revolution, the solar panel buildout and the battery storage infrastructure required to decarbonise the global economy all depend on materials that South Africa has in abundance. The international capital pursuing those materials is enormous. And South Africa, by Hersov's assessment, is missing all of it because of policy uncertainty, Black Economic Empowerment regulations that he argues deter foreign investment, and the failure to create a stable and predictable regulatory environment for mining companies.

Hersov told Mantashe that exploration investment in South Africa has collapsed. New mines are not being built. Existing mines are not being expanded. Jobs are being lost in communities across the Northern Cape, North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga that have no alternative economic base. While competitor jurisdictions in West Africa, East Africa and southern Africa are attracting mining capital by offering clear regulatory frameworks and competitive fiscal terms, South Africa is offering uncertainty and bureaucracy.

Who Rob Hersov is

Rob Hersov is not a professional provocateur. He is one of South Africa's most experienced international businesspeople, with a career spanning finance, aviation, media, luxury goods and investment that has taken him from Johannesburg to Goldman Sachs, to the office of Rupert Murdoch at News Corp, to the boardroom of Johann Rupert's Richemont, and back to Africa through a series of investment platforms built specifically around the continent.

He was born in Johannesburg in 1961 into one of South Africa's most prominent business dynasties. His grandfather Bob Hersov founded AngloVaal, one of Southern Africa's largest mining and industrial companies. His father Basil Hersov ran AngloVaal from 1973 to 2001. His mother is Anneline Kriel, a former Miss World. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Science from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

His career began at Goldman Sachs, where he worked in investment banking. He subsequently worked as a senior executive at Morgan Stanley and spent years working directly for Rupert Murdoch at News Corporation, an experience that gave him access to the highest levels of global media and finance. He served as Executive Director at Richemont, Johann Rupert's Swiss luxury goods group, giving him a direct institutional relationship with South Africa's second most prominent business dynasty.

In 1998, Hersov founded Marquis Jet Europe, a private jet charter company that he later sold to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. The sale to Buffett is the most cited element of his entrepreneurial biography and confirmed his standing as an operator capable of building and exiting businesses at the highest level.

In 2013, he founded Invest Africa, a private membership platform connecting global business leaders, investors and policymakers with opportunities across the African continent. The organisation has built a network of senior members across London, New York, Johannesburg, Geneva, Zurich and Dubai focused specifically on pan-African investment. He is chairman and co-founder of African Capital Investments, a boutique investment bank focused on African markets. He chairs Adoreum Partners, a luxury and lifestyle investment advisory firm, and sits on the VistaJet advisory board, his second major involvement in private aviation after Marquis Jet Europe.

He is also the founder of AltCapInvest, established in 2017 as a family office advisory firm, and S-Group, launched in 2019 as a private business community promoting investment in South Africa. His net worth has been estimated at approximately $1 billion, drawn from the proceeds of the Marquis Jet Europe sale, his investment portfolio across Africa and his advisory and board positions across multiple sectors.

Why he keeps writing to Mantashe

Hersov and Mantashe have a history that predates the open letters. In September 2022, after Hersov called President Cyril Ramaphosa a useless, spineless failure in a widely circulated video, Mantashe responded at a government media briefing by challenging Hersov to stop criticising and start contributing. He revealed that he had spoken to Hersov personally and knew that Hersov had been trying to buy six regional airports from the government, an attempt the government had blocked. Mantashe said that refusing to give Hersov a stake in ACSA did not make government ministers useless, and challenged Hersov to work with government rather than against it.

The open letter format has been Hersov's chosen mode of response. He is not writing to lobby for a specific regulatory change or a specific contract. He is making a public argument about the direction of South African industrial policy, and he is doing so with the credibility of a man who has spent decades working at the highest levels of international capital and who comes from a family that built its own fortune from the same South African mining industry he is now arguing the government is destroying.

Whether Mantashe responds publicly to the June 14 letter remains to be seen. In January, the minister's office did not issue a formal response to the first open letter. The minister himself has consistently defended his tenure at the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, arguing that the structural challenges facing South African mining predate his ministry and that the government is taking concrete steps to modernise the regulatory framework.