JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa's second-largest platinum miner, Implats, on Thursday offered the position of chairperson of the board to incumbent nonexecutive director Dr Khotso Mokhele.

The overture to Mokhele follows the acrimonious sacking of Dr Fred Roux.

Implats said in a Stock Exchange News Service announcement that it would consider Mokhele's appointment as its new chairperson at its board meeting on November 11.

Implats said that Mokhele had indicated his intention to accept a nomination and subsequent election as chairperson, should the board so resolve.

Implats said that it was anticipated that Dr Mokhele's appointment would be effective from November 11, when he would replace acting chairperson, Michael McMahon.

Roux has indicated that he may take retaliatory legal action on the grounds that his summary sacking was "unjustified".

Underlying the decision of the Implats board was said to be tension between Roux and Implats CEO David Brown, with Royal Bafokeng Holdings CEO Niall Carroll - who represents a substantial Implats shareholding - reportedly siding with Brown to oust Roux.

Although Carroll, Roux said, had expressed a desire for the matter to be contested outside the public domain, Roux had decided that shareholders were "entitled to transparency in all matters concerning their company" and went public.

Roux wrote that he had reported a matter in "a dispassionate one liner" and that it had elicited no comment whatsoever from the board.

Roux said that he had to concede that the relationship between Brown and himself had been under a measure of strain, "probably because ... I did the unthinkable and actually criticised the Implats executives for a substandard performance during the past year, basically, overpromising and underdelivering".

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