Johannesburg - African Rainbow Minerals, the gold mining company, yesterday overtook Tokyo Sexwale's Mvelaphanda Resources as the largest black-owned mining company listed on the JSE Securities Exchange.
Set up by its chairman Patrice Motsepe in 1997 to buy mines near closure from AngloGold Ashanti, the country's biggest miner, African Rainbow is now the owner of the biggest nickel mine.
The company has an estimated market value of R7.7 billion, a seventh of AngloGold's.
Motsepe and Sexwale are benefiting from President Thabo Mbeki's push to spread wealth to black people, but critics, including Moeletsi Mbeki, the brother of the president, say the government's policy favours only a select few.
Black South Africans currently head just two of the 40 biggest firms traded in Johannesburg: MTN and Telkom.
Moeletsi Mbeki, who is the deputy chairman of the SA Institute for International Affairs, a local think-tank, said: "If you create a small privileged class, I don't think that creates stability in any country."
Laws passed by President Mbeki's government will compel mining companies to sell 26 percent of their assets to black people by 2014.
Motsepe, the son of a Tswana princess, already has investments in platinum, gold and a top soccer team.
He is one of a handful of black businessmen connected to the ANC.
Motsepe, the president of the association of black businesses the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry, declined to be interviewed.
Gwede Mantashe, the general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, said the rise of a few had not helped the majority of black people. "You see the same faces over and over," he said.
Servaas van der Berg, an economics professor at Stellenbosch University, said about 36 percent of South Africa's 45 million people live in poverty.
Black people control 3 percent of the companies traded in Johannesburg, according to BusinessMap, a consultancy that tracks black participation in the economy.
African Rainbow was created by Motsepe, Bernard Swanepoel, Harmony's chief executive, and Rick Menell, the chairman of Anglovaal.
Harmony paid R4.86 billion in stock for shares it did not already own in Anglovaal's gold unit. African Rainbow agreed to merge its assets, including Harmony shares, with Anglovaal's non-gold business to create African Rainbow Minerals.
Swanepoel then formed a voting pact with Motsepe, giving them control of 63 percent of the new company.
Nelson Maghwazima, the first vice-president of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Motsepe "has encouraged a lot of black entrepreneurs and has done extremely well for black economic empowerment".
Motsepe sold shares in African Rainbow's gold business on the JSE last year. He then sold the business to Harmony for R5.45 billion in stock, winning 14 percent of the world's fifth-biggest gold producer.
He owns Mamelodi Sundowns, one of the top local soccer teams, and leads a group that is buying as much as 12 percent of Sanlam, Africa's biggest life insurer.
Menell, whose grandfather Simeon "Slip" Menell founded Anglovaal in 1933, said black empowerment was "a trickle, but it's going to turn into a flood".
Reg Rumney, an executive director of BusinessMap, said: "The new black tycoons are conspicuous but that doesn't mean they are numerous, or they control that much."
"The Oppenheimer family probably has more money than all the black millionaires combined."
African Rainbow Minerals lost 50c yesterday to R37 while the sector gained 0.17 percent. Mvelaphanda rose 4c to R22.05 while the platinum sector lost 0.23 percent.