Billionaire businessman and football supremo Patrice Motsepe has allegedly given senior staff at his company a severe dressing down in a marathon tongue lashing following a Sunday World exposé implicating African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) in labour misconduct.
On August 4, this publication reported that ARM showed the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) the middle finger when it failed to appear before the
labour dispute resolution centre for a case of unfair medical retrenchment after it laid off a bodyguard.
Sources close to the debacle alleged that on August 5, just one day after the damning article was published, Motsepe corralled his top brass – CEO Phillip Tobias, HR director
Busi Tshabalala and legal eagles Lucas Moalosi and Pieter Coetzee – into a room for what insiders at ARM described as a “heated discussion”.
“The chairman shouted at all those who were in the meeting. He was not very pleased after the story broke in the media,” said a source privy to the developments but not authorised to speak to the media.
The spark that lit this rhetorical pyre was “Muleya’s matter,” a shorthand within ARM for the case of Albert Muleya.
Muleya, a bodyguard, sustained injuries while defending one of Motsepe’s sons from bouncers at Pretoria’s illustrious Hi-Grow Cafe more than three years ago.
ARM then decided that the best way to handle Muleya’s thumb injury was to fire him. When the CCMA instructed ARM to justify this decision on February 14, 2024, the company failed to appear before the labour dispute resolution centre. As a result, the CCMA referred the matter to the Labour Court for trial, according to Muleya.
In court papers, it was revealed that Muleya, an ARM employee since November 11, 2012, found himself on the receiving end of management’s alleged dubious ‘care’.
Despite breaking his thumb on April 30, 2021, and undergoing surgery and physiotherapy while on special leave, management shuffled him around like a jiggling deck between light duties, normal duties, and night shifts.
In October 2021, the company allegedly suppressed Muleya’s desire for day shifts by insisting he must first consult a medical professional.
The doctor recommended light duties. ARM management, however, responded by insisting that Muleya return to normal duties.
Muleya was then retrenched on September 29, 2023, with a package amounting to R163 338.
Muleya is now engaged in a legal battle with ARM, aiming to regain his job or receive
substantial compensation.
Muleya is still waiting for his day in court, while his lawyer and ARM counsel engage in pre-trial meetings.
ARM spokesperson Betty Maloka refused to comment, saying the company does not “comment on speculations.”
