Sanlam writes its stake in Anna Mokgokong's AfroCentric down to zero

Sanlam has written its 60% stake in AfroCentric down to nil, three years after buying it.

The insurer, worth 175 billion rand on the Johannesburg exchange, is not selling. Chief executive Paul Hanratty ruled that out this week, saying the healthcare group remains an excellent business and that the work now is cutting its costs to what it can afford.

Losing the Bonitas contract was clearly a big blow, he said, but Sanlam still thinks it is a good business with great management and is conducting a rightsizing exercise. There are execution challenges ahead in getting the cost base right.

Anna Mokgokong is AfroCentric's non-executive chairman.

The role means she runs the board rather than the company. A board hires and fires the chief executive, approves the strategy, signs off the accounts and answers to shareholders, while the executives handle the business day to day. Gerald van Wyk is the chief executive who does that. Hanratty sits on the same board as a non-executive director, representing Sanlam's 60%.

Mokgokong has held the chair for years, and she was there long before Sanlam arrived.

She trained as a medical doctor, taking a science degree at the University of Botswana and a medical degree at the Medical University of South Africa, then moved into business in the 1990s as the end of apartheid opened corporate South Africa to black ownership.

In 1995 she co-founded Community Investment Holdings with Joe Madungandaba. The company buys and holds controlling and significant stakes in operating businesses rather than trading shares, and it is 100% black-owned and women-led. Its portfolio, which the group values above 20 billion rand, spans healthcare, technology and telecommunications, power and energy, mining, logistics and infrastructure, and AfroCentric grew out of its healthcare interests.

She bought Forever Resorts this month through an associated investment company, taking control of Warmbaths, Badplaas and four other South African holiday destinations.

Few South Africans hold more board seats. Mokgokong chairs Seriti Resources and Seriti Coal, has chaired Rebosis Property Fund and Jasco Electronics, and sits on the boards of Medscheme, Schneider Electric South Africa and Adcock Ingram. She became the first woman appointed to the board of Shoprite in 2012 and the first female chancellor of North-West University in 2019.

AfroCentric runs the machinery behind South African medical aid.

Its largest division administers medical schemes. A South African medical scheme is a non-profit fund owned by its members, and most do not employ the staff to run themselves, so they contract it out. Medscheme, AfroCentric's principal subsidiary, does that work: processing claims, deciding what the scheme pays for, negotiating rates with hospitals and doctors, managing chronic illness cases and handling member queries. It is the largest health risk management business of its kind on the continent.

The second division sells drugs. AfroCentric manufactures medicines and multivitamins, wholesales them and retails them, giving it a position across the whole pharmaceutical chain rather than a slice of it.

The third sells health programmes to employers, packaging wellness and occupational health services alongside the scheme administration.

The model depends on volume. Administration fees are charged per member per month, so a scheme with hundreds of thousands of members is the difference between profit and loss.

Bonitas was one of those. It is among South Africa's largest open medical schemes, meaning anyone can join rather than only the staff of a single employer, and Medscheme had been its administrator and managed care provider for years. The fund gave notice and the relationship ended on May 31, after a dispute in which Bonitas blamed Medscheme for a backlog in processing claims. The monthly fees stopped. The staff, systems and premises built to service those members did not.

Sanlam bought control in order to add healthcare to what it sells, in a run of deals that included Assupol and was meant to build a fortress position in South Africa while expanding across the continent and into India.

AfroCentric has been shrinking since. It agreed in December to sell Activo Health to Portugal's FHC group to cut debt, and impairments pushed it into a loss in March despite rising sales.

The board added a name on Thursday with a connection worth noting. Zakhe Zuma joined as a director and, from Sept. 17, as a member of the group investment committee. He has more than eleven years of board experience at listed property companies and property investment funds, and since March 2025 he has been a principal transactor at African Rainbow Capital, the investment firm Patrice Motsepe founded.