South African coal tycoon Mike Teke's Seriti loses coal rights appeal to rival

South African coal tycoon Mike Teke's Seriti Power has lost an appeal to the country's mining minister in a dispute with a junior coal miner over two plots of land at its Khutala mine in Mpumalanga province, a colliery that supplies Eskom's Kendal power station.

Gwede Mantashe, the minister of mineral and petroleum resources, dismissed Seriti's appeal against a decision by his department to add two plots, portions 4 and 28 of a farm inside the Khutala mining area, to the mining right held by Kunolwazi Resources, a smaller coal producer. Seriti says the plots are part of its Khutala rights and were never given up. It has gone to the High Court in Pretoria and says it will keep fighting.

The ruling leaves Teke, who built Seriti into Eskom's largest coal supplier, in a legal fight with a company a fraction of its size over land Mantashe described as "a small, stranded block within the Khuthala mining area."

How the dispute started

The row goes back to an agreement Seriti and Kunolwazi reached in December 2024, under which Seriti would give up its rights to the two plots as part of a black economic empowerment deal. Seriti needed the consent of Eskom, the state power utility that buys Khutala's coal, before it could let the land go.

On April 16, 2026, Edson Ragimana, director-general of the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, approved an amendment to Kunolwazi's mining right to include the plots, using his powers under section 102 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act. Seriti appealed to the minister.

Mantashe rejected the appeal on the grounds that Seriti had never made the deal depend on Eskom. "Seriti did not state in its application that it was conditional on consent by Eskom," he wrote. "The argument by Seriti to the effect that the decision-maker committed an error is without merit and cannot be considered." He found that the appeal had not shown the director-general's decision to be unlawful, unreasonable or procedurally unfair.

Seriti says the deal lapsed

Seriti disputes the minister's account. "An agreement concluded between the parties in December 2024 lapsed due to the non-fulfilment of a condition precedent," the company said. It said the plots were never abandoned or transferred, that the agreement has no legal effect, and that the appeals and related court applications are still before the courts.

The company called Kunolwazi "highly opportunistic in its approach to a failed transaction" and said it "will take whatever steps are necessary to protect its rights."

Kunolwazi stopped work on the two plots in May after Seriti took the matter to the Pretoria High Court. In an affidavit, Kunolwazi director Tshepo Seema said the company and its subsidiary, Mbali Coal, which together employ about 300 staff and contractors, face "catastrophic and immediate financial prejudice." He said Eskom's consent was "legally irrelevant" and that the transfer "will have no impact on Seriti's contractual obligations to Eskom."

Eskom's biggest coal supplier

Khutala, about 30 kilometers southwest of eMalahleni, produces about 5.5 million metric tons of coal a year, all of it for Kendal. Seriti took over the mine when it bought South32's South African coal business in 2021, a deal that included an upfront payment of R100 million ($6.1 million) and the assumption of the business's liabilities. The purchase made Seriti the supplier of about 30% of the roughly 120 million tons of coal Eskom burns each year.

Teke, Seriti's co-founder and chief executive, is a former president of the Chamber of Mines, the industry body now called the Minerals Council South Africa. He was a founder and later chief executive of Optimum Coal, which listed in Johannesburg in 2010 before Glencore bought it.

He has spent recent years pushing Seriti beyond coal. Its renewable energy arm, Seriti Green, brought its first 155-megawatt wind farm, Ummbila Emoyeni, into commercial operation in July. "We took advantage of the fact that we are a coal miner," Teke told the Joburg Indaba mining conference this month. "We invested in Seriti Green, and that's proper transition."