Anglo American company Kumba Iron Ore last week opened a sun-powered Internet school in Tembisa.
The initiative, at Jiyana Secondary School, is the first of four such projects to improve education, feed pupils and produce cooking gas from recycled waste.
The solar Internet interventions are designed to bridge the digital divide in underprivileged areas that have limited access to education and connectivity, allowing learners to access curricula on iPads and tablets.
Kumba will spend R10.5-million on the initia-tive, which will supply similar netschools, as well as on vegetable gardens, biodigesters that produce gas from recycled waste, and building upgrades in the Northern Cape and Limpopo provinces, where it mines iron-ore.
“We believe that our clean energy interventions will improve learner performance,” said Kumba Iron Ore public affairs head Yvonne Mfolo.
Last year, close to half of the company’s R34.8-million education and training budget was directed at preprimary and primary schools to ensure adequate facilities that would attract skilled and committed teachers.
Since listing on the JSE in 2006, Kumba’s cash return to its black shareholding has totalled R23.5-billion and its near-mine communities have been receiving dividends of more than R500-million a year.
In 2011, Kumba turned each of its 6 209 employees into pretax half-millionaires when each of them received a R576 000 capital pay-out.
Kumba’s employees, who own 3% of Sishen Iron Ore Company, stand to receive another large pay-out when the Envision employee share ownership plan matures again in November 2016. They have also received dividends.
Twenty-six per cent of Kumba, headed by CEO Norman Mbazima, has been in black hands for the last eight years, following the unbundling of the mining assets out of the former State-owned integrated steelmaking corporation, Iscor, now ArcelorMittal South Africa.
Kumba obtains its empowerment credentials from the black-controlled JSE-listed Exxaro, which incorporated the black-owned Eyesizwe coal business, Tiso, Eyabantu, Basadi Bakopane and the State-owned Industrial Development Corporation holdings to create South Africa’s largest 55% black-held company.
The three mines in Kumba’s stable have rela-tively long lives. The new Kolomela mine, in the Northern Cape, has a 25-year horizon, excluding all the exploration potential; Sishen has at least another 19 years to go, and the Thabazimbi mine, in Limpopo, is being reconfigured into a low-cost, long-life operation.