ABOUT LAFRAS LUITINGH
Let me start with where I find myself today.
Let me start with where I find myself today. I’m the acting Chairman and majority shareholder of JVChantete Mining Services, based in Kitwe, the heart of Zambia’s Copperbelt region. I started my association with the company, then known as Chantete Emeralds, in 2000, as a funding partner. As the company grew I immersed myself in its operations, and at various stages I’ve served in multiple positions in the company. I am based in Zambia, having lived here since 2012 when it became clear that there was enormous potential for expanding the enterprise’s services and further growing the business.
Since then I have come to admire and respect Zambia and have a high regard for its people. People grow, and change their priorities, and today my particular focus for the business is how JVChantete can fulfil its mission of contract mining and bulk earth moving while also uplifting local communities. I believe all companies should be adjusting their focus; leaders should be asking how they can make profits while operating with principles and serving a wider purpose. I hope visitors to this website will see this belief threading through my occasional blog posts and links to articles – whether related to the mining industry or of more general interest.
Looking ahead means understanding one’s past.“Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zone and soar, all right?”
- Michelle Obama
This is one of many inspirational phrases from the former U.S. First Lady. I was lucky: my parents, both teachers, encouraged me to apply this attitude to my life from a young age, long before the First Lady became famous. I was always keen to seize the day – to try to achieve what I could, wherever I found myself.
Born, and growing up, in pre-democracy South Africa, military service was compulsory. I was confident and realised I had problem-solving and leadership skills, so I rose quickly to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the South African Special Forces.
On rejoining civilian life I worked as Regional Manager for giant newspaper and publishing house, Perskor, based in Cape Town. But I missed using my piloting skills and being involved in the logistics of air transport. I started an import venture in Angola, transporting and warehousing basic commodities. The escalation of the Angolan civil war made it impossible to keep the business afloat, so I returned to South Africa in 1992.
Like many service- men and -women, I found it difficult to pull away from military life. I missed having a bigger purpose, so I accepted the Chief Operating Officer position at Executive Outcomes, one of the first private military companies in what is now an established industry.
Whether Executive Outcomes did good work is, I appreciate, a matter of opinion. At least to some degree, however, I believe the organisation tipped the balance of power towards a more just position in many of the fields of its operations. I’ll give readers just two examples. Executive Outcomes’ participation in the Angolan conflict between 1993 and 1994 helped that country’s government to paralyse the UNITA rebel force, leading to the signing of the Lusaka Protocol in October 1994. Albeit a short-lived peace, it was one which would not have happened without the company’s participation, and, debatably, the international community’s forces – including those of Executive Outcomes – were withdrawn too quickly.
Secondly, shortly afterwards the company assisted the Sierra Leone government to defeat the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), ending an 11-year civil war in that country and paving the way for the subsequent free and fair elections in 1996.
I left Executive Outcomes shortly after its Sierra Leone campaign, but various connections urged me to establish a security company, Saracen Uganda. While operating in Kampala I also became involved in that country’s mining industry before expanding my interest in the sector by investing in a portfolio of Australian mines.
Saracen Uganda grew from strength to strength, and the company’s reputation became known in senior political echelons and bureaucrat circles in the wider region. In 2009 I presented an anti-piracy strategy to the highest level of leadership of the United Arab Emirates. My recommendations were approved, and at the UAE’s request I established a new company, Sterling Corporate, with the mission of helping fight piracy around the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden.
Piracy had plagued international shipping in the region since the mid-2000s, and cooperative international countermeasures were proving slow. Sterling Corporate’s strategy was to train a thousand new policemen at Bosaso, the main city in east Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region, the de facto headquarters for most of the piracy gangs. The Puntland Marine Police Force (PMPF) became operational in 2010, and with the international community simultaneously having deployed a joint naval task force scanning the Horn of Africa, piracy in the region was largely halted within two years.
These kinds of experiences have given me a spectrum of knowledge and skills which I believe to be fairly unique. Besides the capacity and practical ability to get things done, I have seen first-hand the links between economies and geographies, between politics and business, between power-mongering and the people it impacts.
This has not left me cynical, nor resigned. I am determined, more than ever, to make a difference in the time and place I now call here, and home.