South African lawyer Mathews Phosa built his fortune by taking equity instead of legal fees

Mathews Phosa once explained his business model in a single sentence. He helped communities apply for mining rights. When they could not afford to explore, he helped them list on the stock exchange and raise the money. In return, he took shares.

That arrangement, repeated across three decades, is why a lawyer who spent five years in exile commanding an armed unit in Mozambique now chairs a mining company listed in London.

Phosa became chairman of Jubilee Metals Group on April 30, 2025, succeeding Ollie Oliveira, a chartered accountant with four decades in the sector. Jubilee processes chrome and platinum group metals in South Africa and copper in Zambia, with chrome concentrates supplying the bulk of its sales.

He sits on roughly twenty boards. Most are companies he chairs or advises rather than owns.

A law practice in Nelspruit

Nakedi Mathews Phosa was born on September 1, 1952 in Mbombela township, Nelspruit, in what was then the Eastern Transvaal and is now Mpumalanga province.

He was raised by his grandfather in a rural area near Potgietersrus, now Mokopane. He attended Maripi High School in Acornhoek and matriculated at Orhovelani High School in Thulamahashe.

Phosa studied law at the University of the North, one of the segregated universities the apartheid state created for black students. In 1981 he opened a legal practice in Nelspruit, the first black-owned law firm in the town.

Exile, and a military command

The practice lasted four years.

Phosa became involved in underground work with the Black Consciousness Movement, the United Democratic Front and the African National Congress. In 1985 he left South Africa. The O'Malley Archives at the Nelson Mandela Foundation record that he went into exile after an assassination plot against him.

He trained militarily in East Germany, then returned to the region. By 1986 he was regional commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing, which carried out sabotage and guerrilla operations against the apartheid state from bases in neighbouring countries. Phosa ran its operations out of Mozambique into his home province, serving under Jacob Zuma, then an MK field commander.

He also taught Afrikaans. President Samora Machel of Mozambique told him his intelligence officers could not read intercepted South African material, so Phosa built a course, taught it, and distributed Afrikaans books to Mozambican schools. He speaks nine languages.

He wrote poetry in Maputo, later published as Chants of Freedom.

Back first, before the others

When the ANC was unbanned in 1990, Phosa was one of the first four members sent home to open negotiations with the National Party government.

He helped draft the Groote Schuur Minute and the Pretoria Minute, the agreements that made talks possible. He headed the ANC's legal department, coordinated the return of exiles, and set up the party's departments at Shell House in Johannesburg. He took part in CODESA, the convention that negotiated the end of apartheid.

Nelson Mandela appointed him the first premier of Mpumalanga in 1994. He held the post until June 15, 1999.

Then he left politics for business, at 46, with a legal qualification and a contacts book.

Equity instead of fees

The model Phosa built was straightforward and unusual.

Rural communities in South Africa often sit on mineral rights they cannot exploit. Applying for the rights is a legal problem. Funding exploration is a capital problem. Phosa handled the first as a lawyer and the second by taking the assets to market, and he was paid in shares rather than invoices.

Fees end when the work ends. Equity keeps paying, and it accumulates across many small positions rather than one large one. That is why his name appears on so many boards in so many sectors, and why almost none of them are companies he founded.

The spread runs from timber to manganese. He is executive chairman of Vuka Forestry Holding and of Eveni Investments and Consulting, chairman of Brent Oil, and a director of Value Group, the listed logistics company, Hans Merensky Holdings, Merensky Timber, Vuka Timbers, Bauba Resources, Braemore Resources and TSB Sugar Holdings. Records compiled by MarketScreener also list him at Salene Manganese and M3P Mining and Engineering.

The law never went away. He remains a director of Du Toit-Smuts and Mathews Phosa Inc, Frans Schutte and Mathews Phosa Inc, Phosa Loots Attorneys and Mathews Phosa and Associates.

He sits on the board of Rubic One Health, a company set up to produce low-cost vaccines in South Africa and beyond, and heads the Phosa Legacy Group.

What he chaired, and what he left

Phosa has spent as much time leaving boards as joining them.

He chaired the Council of the University of South Africa from 2003 to 2015, and has been a trustee of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, the Afrikaans business association, since 1999. He chaired Special Olympics South Africa.

He was chairman of iOCO from 2011 to 2012, of Firestone Energy from 2014 to 2016, of Alliance Mining Corporation and of The Waterberg Coal Company. He was a non-executive director of Absolute Holdings.

He also served as independent non-executive chairman of EOH Holdings, the technology group that later disclosed a major accounting scandal and spent years unwinding contracts secured through improper payments.

The politics never stopped

Business did not replace politics for Phosa. It ran alongside it.

In 2001 he was named, with Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, in an alleged plot to unseat President Thabo Mbeki. All three were exonerated. Phosa has described the accusation as false and says it pushed him to the margins of the party for years.

He returned as ANC treasurer-general in 2007, elected at the Polokwane conference that made Zuma party president, and served until 2012. He then fell out with Zuma, becoming one of his sharpest internal critics, and the two did not speak for years.

He stood for ANC deputy president in 2012 and lost heavily to Ramaphosa, taking 470 votes to Ramaphosa's 3,018. He announced a run for the ANC presidency on June 11, 2017, and lost that too, again to Ramaphosa.

His memoir, Witness to Power, was published in 2024.

What the record actually shows

Phosa is frequently described as one of South Africa's wealthiest men, and the figures attached to him vary wildly.

Published estimates range from $5 million to $450 million, none of them traceable to a filing, an audited statement or a disclosed shareholding. Forbes has never listed him among Africa's billionaires. Vuka Forestry and Eveni Investments are private and publish nothing.

What is documented is the position rather than the price. Jubilee Metals is listed on London's AIM market, so Phosa's chairmanship, his membership of its audit and risk committee and its remuneration committee, and any shareholding he declares are all matters of public record. Value Group is listed in Johannesburg. The rest sits in private companies.

Phosa turns 73 on September 1. He received the inaugural Fellow of Stadio lifetime award on April 13, 2022, and is married to Pinky Phosa.

A man who opened a law office in a small Mpumalanga town in 1981, lost it four years later to an assassination plot, and spent five years commanding an armed unit from Maputo, came home to trade legal work for shares in other people's mines. Nobody can price what that produced. The board seats are public, and there are about twenty of them.