Background and career
Patrice Tlhopane Motsepe (born 28 January 1962) is a South African billionaire businessman and football administrator who has served as president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) since 2021. His net worth is estimated at $3.7 billion as of June 2026 according to Forbes. He is the founder and Non-executive Chairman of major South African mining company African Rainbow Minerals, which has interests in gold, ferrous metals, base metals, and platinum. Motsepe sits on several company boards, and is the non-executive chairman of Harmony Gold, the world's 12th largest gold mining company, and the deputy chairman of Sanlam. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum. Motsepe acquired ownership of the football club Mamelodi Sundowns in 2003. In 2013, he joined The Giving Pledge, committing to give half of his wealth to charitable causes. In January 2024, Motsepe was named Africa's ninth-richest man and South Africa's third-richest man after Johann Rupert and Nicky Oppenheimer by CNBC Africa alongside Koos Bekker, with an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion.
Patrice Motsepe was born to Kgosi Augustine Butana Chaane Motsepe, a chief of the Mmakau branch of the Tswana people, who had previously been a schoolteacher and who was later a small businessman as the owner of a Spaza shop which was popular with mine workers. It was from this shop that Motsepe learned basic business principles from his father, as well as first-hand exposure to mining. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Swaziland and a law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. He specialised in mining and business law.
In 1994, he became the first black partner in the law firm Bowman Gilfillan—the same year that Nelson Mandela was elected as the country's first black president. While the new government began promoting black empowerment and entrepreneurship; Motsepe founded Future Mining, which provided contract mining services that included the cleaning of gold dust from inside mine shafts for the Vaal Reefs Gold mine, and implemented a system of worker remuneration that combined a low base salary with a profit-sharing bonus.
In 1997, with gold prices at a low, he purchased marginal gold mines from AngloGold under favourable finance terms. AngloGold sold Motsepe six gold mine shafts for $7.7 million allowing him to repay the debt out of the future earnings of the company now known as African Rainbow Minerals. This was repeated in a string of deals and Motsepe set up a firm to begin buying the operating mines that would become the source of his wealth. In 1999, he teamed up with two of his associates to form Greene and Partners Investments. The Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) laws introduced after the 1994 elections have been instrumental in cementing Motsepe's position in the mining industry in South Africa. A business must have a minimum of 26% black ownership to be considered for a mining license. Since 2004, Motsepe has been a non-executive director of Absa Group and Sanlam. In 2002, when it was listed on the JSE Security Exchange, African Rainbow Minerals joined with Harmony Gold Mining Ltd. and the company's name changed to ARMgold. Motsepe is also the founder of African Rainbow Minerals Platinum (Proprietary) Limited and ARM Consortium Limited, which later equally split ownership with Anglo American Platinum Corp Ltd. From 2005, Motsepe was Chairman of Teal Exploration and Mining Incorporated. Motsepe is also chairman of Ubuntu-Botho Investments, Non-Executive chairman of Harmony Gold Mining Co Ltd. and deputy Chairman of Sanlam Ltd. Motsepe has been president of South Africa's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In 2003, Motsepe created Ubuntu-Botho Investments (UBI) (and in 2019 he owned 55% of it). In 2004 UBI entered into a BEE deal with insurance and financial services company Sanlam. That deal ended in 2014 when the debt had been paid and UBI acquired 13.5% of Sanlam, but UBI has a 18.1% voting stake in Sanlam as its BEE partner. UBI then started African Rainbow Capital (ARC), a wholly owned subsidiary of UBI. ARC's joint chief executive is Johan van Zyl, former executive of Sanlam. ARC has holdings in more than 40 companies, including GoTyme Bank, industrial group Afrimat, agricultural company BKB, telecommunications company Rain, luxury property estate Val de Vie, and a minority stake in Alexander Forbes, the pension fund administrator.
In 2024, Motsepe extended his investment portfolio to include the renewable energy sector, addressing South Africa’s energy shortages. He supported the establishment of GoSolr, a company specializing in renting solar panels and batteries to residential customers. GoSolr, a collaboration between African Rainbow Capital Investments Ltd. (a branch of Motsepe's Ubuntu-Botho Investments) and Standard Bank Group Ltd., has pledged to invest 10 billion Rands (approximately $537 million) to enhance its solar generation capacity. Initially capable of producing 70 megawatts, the company plans to expand its capacity to about 500 megawatts over a four-year period.
