Kebble senior leaves mining

He reckons his legal woes - dating from years of mining controversy - could be over by mid-year 2009. If so, that would allow Kebble to move to Cape Town and focus on his new business - ironically, one of purification.

Kebble, along with Peter Flack, is credited with inventing a new approach to South African gold mining, which used to be dominated by cumbersome, top-heavy behemoths.

The new approach, effectively a reinvention of the mining industry, extended the life of marginal mines nobody else wanted. It also saved jobs and made lots of money.

Mike Prinsloo, hand-picked by Kebble in 1994 to help lead the reinvented Durban Roodepoort Deep, says: "They put a real emphasis on mineral resources and the orebody rather than on corporate politics.

"It was a totally different philosophy to what was generally accepted back then. It was a concept developed by Roger."

However, Kebble is now scathing of the mining industry. He owns mining shares and speaks with management at gold and uranium junior Simmer & Jack Mine "now and then" about strategy. But otherwise he's no longer involved in the sector.

"I've become quite disenchanted with it all," says Kebble at his penthouse office in trendy Melrose Arch, north of Johannesburg.

Fate would have it that his office is directly above those that used to be owned by Harmony Gold when it was led by Bernard Swanepoel, someone for whom Kebble has no kind words.

Swanepoel, brought into the Randgold stable in 1995 by Kebble to run Harmony Gold, swiped Randfontein Estates from under the nose of Brett Kebble.

Kebble senior viewed that as a double cross and the beginning of the end for Brett, shot dead in his luxury Mercedes-Benz in September 2005.

The Randfontein Estates putsch also scuppered Brett Kebble's plans to join Harmony, Durban Roodepoort, Randgold Resources and investment company CAM - plus ailing mining house JCI - into a major company that was to have then bought Gold Fields of SA.

'World's most powerful mining guys'

Had that happened, it would have created an extremely powerful mining company, says Prinsloo.

The entity would then have ended in a Toronto listing. "If we had all kept it together - and if some of us hadn't become greedy - we would have been the most powerful mining guys in the world," says Prinsloo. "There's no doubt in my mind."

But now managers of gold mining companies are too wrapped up in corporate politics and empowerment to focus on the basics of mining, laments Kebble.

It's that mining discipline that made him such a force in mining in the 90s, he claims. "The young guys just don't have the big boot standing on their throats when they're not doing what they're supposed to do.

"I suppose it's easy when you reach your twilight years to bang your chest and say things are not like they were. But I really think the mining industry has been damaged by this rush to empower it," says Kebble.

There's no doubting the passion he feels for mining, even though his only current exposure to it is what he reads in the press and through monitoring his stock portfolio.

"Mining was like a shot of a very special drug. I'm still invested. It's very hard to get it out of your blood, but I really don't understand all the changes." Dividends from gold companies aren't flowing like water in the current high price environment, he says.

There is no computer on his desk, which is framed by paintings. There are piles of documents, which he turns to in making a point about the new business called SurePure he's involved in with his son, Guy, a former Springbok prop.

He was reading Flight International just before the interview. A small model of his beloved Pilatus PC-12 aircraft stands within arm's reach next to him.

SurePure has developed patented technology that deploys a low-temperature ultraviolet system to take bacteria out of wine, fruit juices and milk. It means no preservatives, such as sulphur, are needed for the first two and no pasteurisation for the latter.

Two large South African retailers are using the process in its milk and a number of South African wine makers are using the system to cut sulphur in their product.

Planes and Mustangs

Aircraft are clearly something that ignites Kebble's excitement and it's easy for him to rush off on a tangent about them. He flicks through Flight International, looking longingly at bigger, faster, more expensive aircraft.

Cars are another source of delight for the grey-haired Kebble, lighting up a face that's been well lived in. He's having four Ford Mustangs, dated between 1965 and 1968, restored to give to each of his grandsons when they turn 21.

The first will only leave Kebble's hands five years from now. "Meanwhile, grandpa is going to play with them," he beams.

Asked whether it's time to quit the business world, he says: "This is my retirement. I'm still in Johannesburg waiting for things to clear up and then I'll move to my house in Cape Town. There could be closure in Johannesburg within a year."

Kebble says he's assisting the elite crime-fighting unit known as the Scorpions in their investigation into the financial quagmire that's JCI and Randgold & Exploration.

"I've tried to get involved in as constructive a way possible at JCI. I'd like to know where the money went. A lot of blame has been laid on Brett.

In many ways he was complicit in waste, but I don't think he stole money. He used it to show largesse, to buy political favour," says Kebble.

"There are still the criminal investigations that are taking place, but I don't think I'm involved in that at all."

'He has big balls'

Someone who knows Kebble and the situation at the two companies, but who declined to be named, says he'd be very surprised if there was any criminal investigation into Roger Kebble.

"Don't be mistaken. Roger has never been an angel. He was a shift foreman and rose through the ranks to be a very powerful person in the mining industry. He's a rough and tough mining character but I don't think he was a crook like Brett."

Another person says it appeared as if Kebble had used the money Brett generated through various schemes as if it were his own, swept along like many others by Brett's charisma and by greed.

"He wasn't a wheeler-dealer like Brett. He's much more down to earth. He has big balls."

Kebble had led a buyout of JCI, when its shares were suspended at 16c, by offering shareholders 30c/share. "We wanted to re-jig JCI back into a mining company - but the finance just didn't come in time."

And it was JCI that eventually was Brett's undoing. Commenting on his business relationship with Brett, Roger Kebble says: "I'd have preferred to have a better working relationship with him regarding all the opportunities that existed.

"As a mentor and as a father I failed to create that relationship that would have been a combined, solid effort in one direction."

Kebble clashed with Brett over the direction JCI should take, with Brett wanting it to be a mining finance provider - which made Roger, who is a mining man, uncomfortable.

He also lays the blame for Brett's profligate lifestyle and fraud at JCI - which a forensic audit estimated at R2bn - squarely at the door of JCI director John Stratton, who has returned to Australia, accusing him of taking advantage of Brett and leading him astray.

Stratton said in a statement to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in response to a June documentary on Brett's death that he hadn't benefited from the fraud at JCI and sister company Randgold & Exploration.

"At completion (of several investigations into JCI and Randgold), the insolvency enquiries found no evidence that I had been a beneficiary of those fraudulent activities," Stratton said.

For Roger Kebble there's also a matter of outstanding taxes.

The SA Revenue Service turned nasty with asset seizures and court cases, but it appears to have come off the boil. Kebble reckons the matter's being resolved amicably between lawyers from both sides and should be completed by this time next year.

One estimate put what Roger Kebble owes revenue at R62m - but he declines to talk about it.

- Miningmx.com

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