The directors of Johncom, South Africa’s second largest media company, should brace themselves: they are the next target of Brian Molefe, the country’s number-one shareholder activist, whose wrath has in recent months led to turmoil in Johannesburg boardrooms.
Mr Molefe does not fit the standard activist profile. He is neither a lone agitator with a tiny shareholding pursuing a personal crusade, nor is he pushing a class action on behalf of angry shareholders. He is far more powerful: as chief executive of the Public Investment Corporation, which manages R720bn (£52bn) of civil servants’ pension funds he is the single largest investor on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
