Cape Town - Sasol yesterday won praise from the government for efforts to transform its top management structure after announcing the appointment of former Johnnic chief executive Christine Ramon as chief financial officer.
Ramon is the third senior black executive to join the petrochemicals and liquid fuels group since it outlined its transformation vision nine months ago and pledged to appoint more black managers.
Less than two weeks ago, Sasol announced that Benny Mokaba, a former chief executive and chairman of Shell South Africa, would become executive director responsible for the energy businesses. In September, Nolitha Fakude, the president of the Black Management Forum, was appointed executive director for strategy and human resources.
"We really appreciate these three appointments," Sandile Nogxina, the director-general of minerals and energy, said yesterday. "If you look at the quality of the candidates, it's people of high calibre. They are really not pushovers.
"We hope they'll assist in driving the process of change."
Sasol has in past years been heavily slated for its slow progress in transforming, and was criticised in 2003 by President Thabo Mbeki for citing black economic empowerment as a business risk in documents related to its secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
The group also incurred the wrath of the Public Investment Corporation a year later for declining the state pension fund manager's nomination of Imogen Mkhize as a non-executive director, but subsequently bowed to the pressure and elected her to the board.
The fractious relationship seemed to be on the mend after Pat Davies, who took over as chief executive in July, pledged to make transformation a top priority.
"We feel that these appointments give credence to undertaking to transform Sasol. We can now see that his vision is being implemented," said Nogxina.
He nevertheless cautioned that management was just one pillar of several requirements outlined in the liquid fuels empowerment charter. The department was worried about a recent report by rating agency Empowerdex that concluded insufficient progress had been made in the petroleum industry on meeting the requirements of the charter.
A meeting with the industry would be called before June to re-evaluate progress, Nogxina said.
Sasol said Ramon, who would report to deputy chief executive Trevor Munday, would sit on both its board and the group executive committee. From June, seven of Sasol's 15-member board will be black and five directors will be women.
Ramon resigned from Johnnic last year after Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) won control of the company. The relationship between the parties was tense as both fought for control over Tsogo Investment Holdings, with HCI emerging the victor.
On the JSE yesterday, Sasol shares fell 75c to R119.65 while the Top40 index gained 0.16 percent.