Peter Williams, a former political activist, a lawyer, a former law partner to high court judges and a company secretary at Alexkor, the state-owned diamond mining company, went through two tumultuous years.
He is one of the "magnificent seven" who steered the company from deep losses to profitability. He feels he is now ready for the business world.
For the past two years, I have been company secretary as part of a seven-member management team at Alexkor. Most of the members were appointed more or less at the same time.
For the years that we have been there, we turned the mine around. Between 1996 and 2001, the mine ran a cumulative loss of R197 million. In the first year of operations, we had an operating profit of R58.8 million.
This financial year, we made another massive profit. Minister Alec Erwin will announce the results at the end of this month.
I learnt on the job.
I'll say I and Rain Zihlangu, the chief executive, worked very closely together. I've learnt quite a lot from him. I also supported him a lot.
One of my key areas of operations was negotiating contracts for the mine. In one contract alone, namely the food and catering, we saved R1 million through renegotiating the contract.
At the mine there are about 520 people. But we're also dealing with shallow-mine contractors and they number about 1 000 people.
It's been a collective effort by the management team. There were various initiatives. In one of them, we installed a system called Flexi Mine.
It's a real-time vessel-tracking system. What that system does is that a contractor can be on a boat and if he wants to register a section he wants to mine, he just phones us and we can track him from our offices and get the co-ordinates and tell him whether that site had been allocated to someone else.
We can monitor infringements by one contractor on the other one's sites. Other decisions that we took were of a strategic nature. We identified a place called Muisvlak as an area where product leakage occurred.
Theft yes. We decided to close it off. Muisvlak is about 90km from Alexander Bay and close to Port Nolloth where most of the contractors live. It's a big inconvenience for them to drive 90km back to the south.
We weighed up the risks and the theft risks outweighed the inconvenience, so we took a decision to fence it off and maintain access and egress control.
Those contractors were mining offshore and it gave them easy access to the mining that takes place there.
That was a weakness in our system due to the fact that no sophisticated security system was in place there.
When that area was closed off, our product size immediately went up and control measures and other initiatives were implemented as well.
There are quite a few. There have been several successful prosecutions.
Many journalists misunderstand what took place there. The first case was a rights determination. The court merely had to determine whether the community has rights and decided in their favour.
Yes, it does have rights.
The constitutional court has determined that they have rights. So we're going back to the land claims court so that it can determine what those rights are.
The court can find that either they get their land back, alternatively they get compensation.
Argument is set to take place on April 25 next year to determine that. In the meantime, the state is having intense negotiations with the community in order to reach an out-of-court settlement.
The Alexkor board is hopeful that an amicable settlement, which results in a win-win situation for all our stakeholders and the community, will be reached.
About R5 million.
Yes, in fact that has just increased to R6 million.
Seeing that that matter is sub judice and the court would have to determine if such a claim is valid, I won't comment.
We've had numerous meetings with community representatives, where they've put their demands to us and we've put counterproposals.
Thus far, we have not been able to find each other. I must give credit to Alec Erwin, who is directly interested in settling the affair.
He seems to be fully apprised of all the relevant facts and he's got a keen desire to settle this case as well.
I have been at Alexkor for two years. My decision to go to Alexkor in the first place was a strategic decision, to get exposure to business. I've been involved in the heart of the operations.
My wife lived there and came to Alexkor for two months and then decided to come back to Cape Town.
It's a semidesert area, so there's always wind and sand, and my family could not adapt. My other reason is that unless you have equity in a business, you will always be an employee.
If I remain at Alexkor, I will be hampered because the business is quite demanding.
At the moment I've entered into a partnership with a Port Nolloth community and we applied for tuna fishing licences. The consortium consists of workers as well non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
It is the Ndabeni community. The Wingfield military base was the subject of a land claim and they were awarded 54ha of land as a settlement. We have formalised a partnership with them.
I have a problem with the way black economic empowerment has been implemented thus far. There's been a very narrow base of beneficiaries.
You have the same names come up over and over again. That is not the government's objective, which is a broad base of people being empowered.
This is the specific reason why they promulgated the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Act.
The second problem I have is fronting - where black people are being used to get contracts and where they don't really get any benefits and they don't build up skills.
I'd like to make sure in my ventures that people are truly empowered, that they acquire skills and that the base is also widened. I see my role as that of an entrepreneur with a social conscience.
So, whatever ventures I get involved in, I'd like to see the broader community benefit from this. This does not necessarily mean I will be denying myself the benefits that would be awarded.
As far as the fishing venture is concerned, I must stress that the workers' trust and the NGOs will get equity in the vessels that we acquire, as well as equity in the companies themselves. Now this is true empowerment.
I am 37.
I'm a lawyer by profession and a partner at the firm E Moosa Waglay & Petersen. The leading partner of that firm, Essa Moosa, is a judge in the high court and another partner, Bashier Waglay, is a judge in the labour court and has applied for a permanent position in the high court as well.
My current partner, Selwyn Hockey, a leading activist in his days, has been an acting judge in the high court.
Basically, because of the injustice of the past, of which I had first-hand experience. I was detained as a student activist and was a founding member of the Congress of SA Students at our school, and various community, student and civic organisations.