As part of Africa's net zero advancement, there has been a decline in support from financial institutions and governments for coal projects. South Africa's Integrated Resource Plan sets out a scheme to abolish 10,000 MW coal-fired power plants and replace them with gas and renewable energy. Even after President Donald Trump has taken loans for the project, the billions of dollars of energy transition partnership (JETP) has been introduced to support the transition, supported by wealthy Western states.
Nevertheless, mining billionaires Tim Tebeira believes dirty coal is still the pinnacle of South Africa's energy mountains. “Coal is here to stay for over 100 years. This is true. Yes, it won't die anytime soon. Many industries rely on coal. The steel industry here depends on coal. There is no green energy that can feed the furnace,” Tebeira says.
This year, Tebeira has put his money where his mouth holds his mouth. He resumed coal mining operations in the large Waterburg coalfields in northern Limpopo Province, north of South Africa. This is a largely undeveloped resource with an estimated 30 billion tonnes of coal, only a portion of which is managed by Tebeira. It is enough to last up to 50 years of country.
Supplied to South Africa's coal poisoning
Tebeira conducted coal mining operations in Waterberg about three years ago, but due to weak coal prices, there are problems with both the Richards Baycoal terminal, where railway lines were exported to both the power plant and the Richards Baycoal end, which is an export hub on the KwaZulu-Natal coast. He owns a coal washing factory and mines in Mpumalanga and eight facilities, covering 11,000 hectares, with an estimated 500 million tonnes of reserves in Waterburg.
However, this year, 800 workers in Tebeira began mining 150,000 tonnes per month from Waterburg as railway problems faded and opportunities drifted. The best of them are sold as steel furnaces from coking coal. In March, government-owned investors sent $92 million to South Africa's Arcelor Mittal to maintain their domestic steel operations. About a third go to exports priced in US dollars. The rest is
It was sent by rail to many coal-fired power plants in Mpumalanga.
Tebeila supplies three coal-fired power plants. Kendall has 4,116 MW of installation capacity. Majuba, 4,110 MW. Arnot at 2100 MW. Between them, they can light up 10 million homes in South Africa.
Decades ago, Eskom, a utility utility, introduced South Africa's aging coal-fired power plants in stages, in stages. Today, coal produces an estimated 85% of South Africa's electricity, despite plans for renewable energy. Tebeira remains bullish on the black thing. “Eskom has a big appetite. The rails are fine and there is a lot of demand for the Mpumalanga power plant,” he says.
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The sun bounces off Maserati and Mercedes parked in a tiled square in front of the huge, refined wooden entrance sandwiched between the sparkling fountains of Tebeira's Johannesburg mansion.
The gold and lilac of 17th century bourbon Saint King Louis XIV in France is lavishly furnished. African mini bellsile. It also reminds me of the brash New York home of American billionaire Donald Trump.
“All of this I bought from France, the same furniture store as Donald Trump!” Tebeila. Luxurious homes are the fruits of life spent building an empire of coal, iron, platinum and gold. The photo depicts Tebeira sitting next to South Africa's first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, in the pride of the place above the wall. Sekoko Resources from Tebeira, a black-owned mining company not on the list, acquired a net worth from $2.8 million and is estimated to have grown quite a bit since.
But invading the mining world was not easy. Early attempts to obtain a mining license were rejected.
A breakthrough appeared in 2005. Tebeira secured mining rights, which she felt she could create her own property. It was located in Suppansberg, near Messina, on the border with Zimbabwe, South Africa, on the grass in Tebeira's hometown in Limpopo.
The permit area spread over 8,000 hectares across 11 farms and has promised 200m tonnes of coal. The only problem was he was unable to raise the $100,000 needed for his first exploration.
“It's very interesting. Fundingers want to fund people who have money, people who already have money, not people who have ideas or good business plans. So I learned that I've never borrowed money in my life.
Tebeira has learned the harsh methods of raising capital. One winter morning he spoke to people from a village near Belabella. Convincing them to invest life savings in coal mines that didn't exist yet was a tough job.
The next morning, a blind woman shuffled into Tebeira's office on the arm of one of her children. She offered her life savings – about $1,000.
Tebeira was humble. More money was taken in from other villagers, allowing him to engage with an Australian mineral consulting company to explore the area. It was like everything was going well. One morning, instinctively he decides to check out the consultant just to find an empty office. Without words to Tebeira, the company packed its bags and put it down. It meant that Tebeira had to stand in front of the people he grew up and tell them that he had lost all his hard-earned money.
Rescued data
He recalls the lab that the runaway consultant used to process the data at a nearby witbank. So Tebeila was able to obtain exploration data for two flimsy pages containing important drilling information. From these two pages, experts were able to reconstruct the report for the entire coal project.
Convinced of its lasting potential, Tebeira has been annoyed for five months trying to sell Soutpansberg's coal project to various investors. Most people in the industry didn't want to know. The Brazilian mining giant Veil showed an interesting flicker, but Tebeira was running out of time and money.
One day he was driving along the highway from Limpopo, when the phone changed his life. This comes from coal, an established mining player in Africa, offering to buy 74% of the assets at 70m rand (approximately $3.8 million at today's exchange rate), and has pledged to invest more to bring the project into a feasibility study of bankability. “It was the biggest deal I've ever got when I was driving!” I remember Tebeira.
It was then the first of many mining transactions ranging from coal, iron, manganese, platinum, chromium, gold and uranium.
Learning at Limpopo
It is fitting that Tebeira's first fortune was made in the mountains of Limpopo, where he flaunted his way out of poverty. If there was any doubt, it would be a tough life, and there was a long walk to school before sunrise from the small village where he grew up. It was barefoot, 20 kilometres barefoot, passing through a jagged, stoned mountain path. He had to stand up at 4am.
“I was slapped every day for two years late,” he recalls with a slight frown.
This painful start to life left a keen eye with the desire and the hustle to overcome the priest's son. During the apartheid era, poor black teenagers like Tebeira didn't expect much to happen amidst difficulties and exclusion. Becoming a village school teacher – a chance to be honorable and wear a tie – was the best they could expect. Back in the 1980s, he found an opportunity on a 100km bus trip from Limpopo to his educational work in Pretoria.
“As a teacher, after the first three months of work, I couldn't receive my salary, so I sold bus tickets to survive,” he says. “When people got on the bus, I was there to sell them tickets for R15 at R15. When they got off, I was there to collect my tickets to sell them again. “I went to the business.”
Sell these tickets and earn R800. It was quite a lot of income, I can tell you. ”
When he was a teenager, he found a way for a taxi driver to deliver a box of apples far from Johannesburg. “I was able to buy this apple box. If I had 50 apples in R50, I could have sold it for twice the price to get R100. It's time to stop playing football with other kids,” he says.
All this reinforced our ambitions to pass through schools and advance in a world open to black entrepreneurs following the collapse of apartheid.
It's not just coal
A few years later, Tebeira, who transformed his first success at Soutpansberg into a diverse mining company that also has interests in Botswana and Nigeria, is still looking for a golden opportunity. He is about to revive the manganese mine in the Northern Cape. Like coal mines, production was stopped due to shortages in prices and rail transport. Manganese in the mine near Postmusburg in the Northern Cape is of medium grade, with purity of 38%, making it suitable for China's steel manufacturer, the largest mineral customer in Africa.
Tebeira plans to increase its production to 50,000 tonnes of manganese ore per month. He plans to take on 400 miners ready for production in the first quarter of 2026, and says new shafts will sink in the coming months.
The biggest hurdle is infrastructure. “We don't have enough rails. There's a bottleneck in that area. Everyone is still crying about the rails. The rails were made for the measure and they were there before us.
Tebeira had to carry out a massive trucking task to get nearly 900 kilometres of manganese ore (a 9-hour trip one way) to export at Coega port in GQEBERHA (Port Elizabeth). He will have 150 trucks join in to travel 50,000 tons.
“One truck should travel every other day. One day a day. One day ago: One truck will carry 15 luggage per month,” he says.
The poor teacher who sold bus tickets still has satisfying ambitions. And anything is possible in one of the few countries in the world where coal is still an attractive proposal.
