JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Arthur Mashiatshidi, former Wesizwe Platinum CEO and New Africa Mining Fund cofounder, has died, aged 51.

The father of three, who helped to pioneer funding for junior miners in South Africa, passed away in the early hours of February 18 after a short illness.

Mashiatshidi, who succeeded founding Wesizwe CEO Mike Solomon in 2010, oversaw the finalisation of the sale of control of Wesizwe to the Chinese consortium of Jinchuan and the China Africa Development Fund.

Mashiatshidi was later succeeded as CEO by Jinchuan’s Jianke Gao and resigned as a nonexecutive Wesizwe director in September last year at a time when the company’s flagship Frischgewaagd-Ledig project was up and running.

He was also an independent nonexecutive director of the JSE-listed fluid-flow equipment company Howden Africa, serving as chairperson of the audit committee for nearly nine years.

Tembisa-born, he underwent a meteoric rise from his early working life as a casual R10-a-piece-job domestic garden worker in the Edenvale area.

He also had a stint as an underground mineworker before obtaining a business science degree from Wharton University in the US, which he cited as his biggest ever opportunity, and later a master’s degree in business administration from the Graduate School of Business in Cape Town.

He often recalled to Mining Weekly Online that during his time as an underground miner, he would take his books down with him so that he could make use of every spare moment to study.

The Wesizwe board and employees expressed their condolences to Mashiatshidi’s wife, Palesa, and his three children, Yolisa, Chipiwa and Renelwe.
 

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