Speaker 1:

Meet South Africa's Prince of Platinum. Well, actually he's a king. The traditional leader of Africa's richest tribe, the Bafokeng. Africa is full of kings and chiefs, but not many like Kgosi Lebone the Second, because he holds the keys to one of South Africa's most valuable natural resources. One of the biggest platinum deposits in the world. And that's turned his tribe into a business. Big business.

Kgosi Lebone:

It's become more of a Bafokeng Inc. because, you know, you're dealing with a lot of mine here. You're dealing with a lot of big administration to administer the mine, and you're dealing with a big population which is growing on a daily basis. So you have to have a formalised way of managing all this whole ... these logistics.

Speaker 1:

The king enjoys the trappings of a royal lifestyle.

Kgosi Lebone:

Stop, baby.

Speaker 1:

Educated in America, he's as comfortable on a golf course with the captains of industry as with the village chiefs. Or then again, maybe not.

Kgosi Lebone:

One more time.

Speaker 1:

Kgosi Lebone the Second is young, black, rich and an achiever in the world of big business, a perfect role for post-Apartheid South Africa. He sits at one of the top tables in the country, rubbing shoulders with the president. But it's a global burden of royalty that private lives are public property. And the king of the Bafokeng is no exception. 35 years old, 2 billion dollars in assets, that spells eligibility.

As a traditional African king, Kgosi is under pressure. He even has the president scouting for a wife.

Speaker 3:

... His mother is not his wife. I say this because I know that he is very, very actively looking for a wife. So that in the event that anybody is interested, please do not be discouraged by any say that the Queen Mother was his wife. The Queen Mother is not mine.

Kgosi Lebone:

Obviously, there are some elders who always call me and say, "You know the deal. You have to do something, man. Tell us your plan."

Speaker 4:

It's really important that they actually want the potion from him, so that they can have another king coming from him. If he can't marry, if he happens to die, who is going to be the head of the throne.

Speaker 5:

Is there a lot of competition?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, there's some competition, but we, as the elderly people here, we want the people to come in, to his [inaudible], to his house. This, girls and all, he stop them not going to him.

Speaker 5:

Is he a bit of a fox, the king?

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

But for now the kings plans are more monetary than marital. For every ounce of platinum that is dug from the lands Kgosi rules over, the tribe gets piece of the action. Last year this amounted to ten million dollars.

The Bafokeng are an extraordinary exception to the rule in South Africa that money and power still resides almost exclusively with whites. How they came to defy history is the result of an incredible twist of fate more than a century ago.

This is the farm that was once owned by poor Kruger, the first president of the Boer republic, a neighbour, and, believe it or not, a good friend of the Bafokeng. Their lands now stretch all the way out to the horizon. It is one of the great ironies of South Africa that this icon of Africana Nationalism was in fact the man who advised the Bafokeng to buy the land and all of its mineral wealth.

Speaker 1:

The dour and religious Africana leader felt he owed a debt to the Bafokeng chief, who had ordered his warriors into battle along-side the white farmers to help win the war against the Zuid. The Bafokeng funded the first land purchases by selling their cattle and sending young men to work on the diamond minds in Kimberly, hundreds of kilometres away. Poor Kruger's advise may have given the Bafokeng the key to great riches, but the apartheid system that grew out of his Africana nationalism would ensure they not see its benefits for nearly a century.

When white-run mining companies starting digging up the platinum, the Bafokeng would be forced to accept that the financial straps sown to the table. By the late 1980's South Africa's beautiful landscape was changing, and as apartheid rotted away at the Bafokeng's chance to claim through the courts what they'd always been denied. It would become one of South Africa's most ferocious legal battles.

Speaker 6:

Alright.

Kgosi Lebone:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

When the case was finally settled, the company gave the Bafokeng keys to the corporate boardroom, where the king is now greeted as an equal among South Africa's titans of mining.

Speaker 7:

How are you?

Kgosi Lebone:

Okay, thanks.

Speaker 7:

Welcome, let me [inaudible].

Speaker 1:

The Bafokeng's reward, a seat on the board, twenty-five million dollars worth of free shares, and a hefty increase in royalties.

Speaker 8:

A couple of chairs for you to choose from over there.

Kgosi Lebone:

Ah, one of those two. I'll choose this.

Well, considering that the [inaudible] four billion, so, we talk about one percent of that would be fourteen million rands. In some years we cause zero, in some years we'd get as fair as little as six million rands. Now if you look at fourteen million, it is a significant change of hat.

Speaker 1:

Kgosi Lebone is literally the king of all he surveys. He took me for a spin in the helicopter to get an overview of the most valuable seventy-thousand hectares in South Africa.

Kgosi Lebone:

We want to have our infrastructure develop.

Speaker 1:

But the king is eager to portray a down-to-earth image. After all, Africa has a sordid reputation for theft and corruption. Under his guides, the Bafokeng has put their money to good use.

Kgosi Lebone:

But we want to do better because we know we can do better.

If you look at Bafokeng geographical area, we've all build all the rows that you see that are taught. The schools that you see are all built by us. The water articulation, the electricity, everything that you see you here without government subsidy. So that's how we're going to continue doing it, by developing it more in a professional way.

Speaker 1:

While there's plenty of money to go around, not all of it is spent on roads, schools, and water.

This is the twenty-five million dollar Bafokeng sport palace.

Kgosi Lebone:

And I think they've done quite a fine job.

Speaker 1:

The king wants it to be a venue for World Cup soccer, if South Africa's bid to host the event is successful.

Kgosi Lebone:

No, no there'll be events but I [inaudible]...

Speaker 1:

But as forty-five thousand seat capacity is more than double the population of the Bafokeng capital Poekeng, and that's an extravagant way to put your name on the map.

But while the Bafokegn have been able to claim what's rightfully theirs, they also intend to keep it that way. In the Bafokeng capital, charity begins at home. Locals get the best, and outsiders get the rest. Ishmael Makute has been coming to wait outside the [inaudible] offices everyday for months. But so far, he hasn't landed a single days work. Why? He's not a Bafokeng.

Speaker 9:

Most of the time they give preference to the Bafokeng people. Bafokeng is the people who are living in this area, so we, the people who are coming from outside, they used to given us work after they employ those people of Bafokeng. If they don't come here, there's no way, and there's no where that they can go to to find a job. So they are just hoping that maybe they are going to be employed next time. So they are very much frustrated, but they are hoping. Just like myself.

Speaker 1:

But Ishmael's fate is unlikely to furrow the brow of the Bafokeng. The platinum mines are a magnet, attracting thousands of desperate job seekers to the area. The Bafokeng territory is bleak, the brutish infrastructure of mining punctuates the horizon in every direction.

The first shift starts before dawn. By six A.M. nearly ten thousand workers will have made the journey a kilometre into the earth. Then it is onto an underground chairlift that continues the journey on to the precious wall-face. This is the life of a South African Platinum miner, ten hours a day, a kilometre underground in a tiny grotto so small, he can't stand up. Heat, danger, backbreaking labour, all for around seven hundred dollars a month.

The platinum resource down here will last a hundred years at least, and for all the money that is going to bring the Bafokeng [inaudible] in the death ridden atmosphere of the mines. There, up top, are the good jobs.

Grant Migano is a twenty five year old engineer who's reaping all the benefits of being a Bafokeng. Put through university at mining company expense, he admits that his people find the underground slog, well, unpalatable.

Grant Migano:

There is the perception, we don't have them working underground. They have this belief that underground is not meant for somebody who is of the community of the Bafokeng. We learn we should get people from the outside to come and do the rough work for us. And we should sit here on the surface and do all the soft jobs that do not stifle us that much.

Speaker 1:

The king's message to men like Grant; One day, all of this will be yours. The Bafokeng hope to open their own mine one day, and you can bet that Grant won't be at the rock face.

Speaker 11:

You can indicate this inside, and it shows you exactly where you can [inaudible].

Grant Migano:

It is a pity that we cannot all be in the same position. It is a pity. There shall always be people who will be below others. There shall always be people who will be given the role to lead other, and that, unfortunately, we cannot turn around.

Speaker 1:

And as for the king, he makes no apologies for this somewhat elitist view.

Kgosi Lebone:

Well, we are South Africans, [inaudible], and we are proud of that. But, we must also preserve our heritage and we must be proud of it, because being South African does mean rejecting your roots, and that is why we should put ourselves first as Bafokeng, and South African's second.

Speaker 1:

The discovery of platinum among the Bafokeng land has allowed the kings tribe to defy a history that has condemned millions of Africans to a life that is lived from one meal to the next.

The African continent has a global history of having its riches plundered with no thought or benefit for the traditional owners. Th platinum king is putting an end to all that, but you have to be a Bafokeng to get a slice of the action.