FOR a junior miner barely two years into its listed life, Mantengu has found itself at the centre of an extraordinary saga — one involving alleged share price rigging, a supposed criminal syndicate and, if its CEO is to be believed, a trail that leads to the JSE.
On the face of it, the reason for Mantengu’s poor share price performance — it has almost halved over the past two years — appears entirely mundane. The company has steadily diluted its register through scrip issues to fund acquisitions, debt-for-equity conversions and an equity financing facility. Together, these have pushed roughly 164-million new shares, double the original total, into a thinly traded market. At the same time, Mantengu’s early-stage mining operations have faced the inevitable start-up hiccups as the company ramps up towards steady-state production.
Mantengu, however, argues something altogether more dramatic. It says a syndicate — allegedly headed by flamboyant businessman Zunaid Moti and assisted by JSE insiders — is deliberately driving down its share price to seize control of the business and its assets at a fraction of their value.
This is despite an investigation of Mantengu’s complaints by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) — South Africa’s market regulator responsible for overseeing trading activity and market conduct — which, in May 2025, concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
The result has left investors unsure not only of what is happening, but whom to believe.
Occam’s razor — the idea that the simplest explanation is usually the right one —would seem to favour the dilution narrative. And for now, hard evidence that Mantengu has put into the public domain is limited.
CEO Mike Miller maintains that more detail exists in an affidavit the company has submitted to the Hawks. He says it will be released once investigators obtain the internal approvals required to execute warrants. Until those details surface, observers are likely to remain sceptical.
Still, nothing is ever simple in South Africa, and even extraordinary claims can’t be dismissed out of hand. And Miller has staked his reputation on proving his company is not merely a casualty of market forces, but a target of market predators.
Miller, 42, is a chartered accountant who once spent three years as a game ranger at Londolozi game reserve. He comes across as friendly and open in conversation. Yet when he describes what he says has been happening to Mantengu, his tone hardens with conviction. When the conversation turns to the FSCA’s conclusion that the trades flagged by Mantengu were legitimate, the frustration shows. In his view, the regulator examined only if individual trades complied with the rules, not whether the trades were co-ordinated.
Miller argues that proving manipulation requires showing intent and links between trading parties, not merely confirming that trades were technically permissible. “We said there is a syndicate colluding in moving our share price, which means there has to be communication between them,” he says. “Otherwise, you’re going to tell me what I know.”
That, he says, is why Mantengu secured an Anton Piller order — a mechanism that allows a court-sanctioned search and seizure of evidence such as e-mails, WhatsApp messages or IP logs before they can be destroyed. “The point is the FSCA intentionally did not join our Anton Piller action.” Miller says the FSCA shouldn’t have finalised its opinion until links between the trades had been proved or disproved. Mantengu moved unsuccessfully to interdict the FSCA from releasing its report, arguing that the regulator was rushing to a conclusion before all evidence had been considered.
The battle is not just about money for Miller. It seems to have become perilously personal. In recent months, as Mantengu’s probe into the alleged syndicate picked up steam, Miller says he survived at least two attempts on his life. One incident in mid-October was a close call. “About two or three weeks ago, they tried to take me out on the freeway,” he recounts, describing how one of the company’s bakkies was intentionally forced off the road.
We said there is a syndicate colluding in moving our share price, which means there has to be communication between them. Otherwise, you’re going to tell me what I know – Mike Miller, Mantengu
The threats have forced him to take drastic precautions. “My family is under 24/7 security,” Miller says. Armed guards now shadow his wife and children. “I’ve got AK-47 rifles around my kids,” he notes grimly — an almost unthinkable scenario for the CEO of a publicly listed company.
“The reality is I can’t ignore it,” he says of the market manipulation issue. “In the same breath, I can’t let this sideshow get into the operations.”
Recognising the risk of losing focus, Miller has restructured his leadership team to keep day-to-day operations on track while he fights the alleged manipulators.
In October, Mantengu promoted its CFO, Magen Naidoo, to also serve as deputy CEO. Key technical tasks have been delegated. For example, a new head of operations now oversees assets such as the flagship Langpan chrome mine, so that Mantengu’s growth plans don’t stall.
Moti denies involvement
Moti flatly rejects all of Miller’s accusations, and he hasn’t been shy about firing back. Moti, 51, is a flashy entrepreneur known for everything from luxury car dealerships to Zimbabwean chrome ventures. He has gone on a media counteroffensive to clear his name. In an interview with BizNews, he labelled Miller “a game ranger turned corporate poacher” and even likened him to “another Markus Jooste” (a reference to the notorious Steinhoff fraudster).
Moti accuses Miller of crying wolf to distract from Mantengu’s problems. He claims the miner’s leadership is misrepresenting facts and trying to mask its shortcomings with sensational allegations. Moti insists he has had no involvement whatsoever in Mantengu’s stock. He says he has “never owned, traded, or held any direct or indirect interest in Mantengu”, adding that he has “no involvement in the company’s business affairs in any capacity”. In Moti’s view, the entire narrative is baseless slander.
Interestingly, in his BizNews interview, Moti referred to Rebosis Property Fund, a JSE-listed real estate company that collapsed amid controversy in 2022. Why Rebosis? It turns out that Moti was controversially involved in that saga.
In 2020, he emerged as the largest shareholder in Rebosis and soon became embroiled in a public spat with the company’s founder and then CEO, Sisa Ngebulana, over contested share transactions. (Rebosis ultimately went into business rescue under a mountain of debt and had its listing removed by the JSE.) By raising Rebosis in the discussion, Moti appeared to be anticipating a particular line of attack.
Indeed, Miller claims to have first-hand evidence that the Rebosis share price was manipulated by the same syndicate he says is targeting Mantengu. He tells the FM that the “previously listed company” whose CEO admitted to taking part in share manipulation — referred to obliquely in Mantengu’s statements — was Rebosis. According to Miller, Ngebulana has privately described how he was pressured and extorted by Moti into joining a scheme to drive down his own company’s stock price before it delisted.
Miller says Ngebulana’s comments are part of a broader set of recorded conversations Mantengu has obtained, in which individuals allegedly discuss plans to manipulate share prices of companies. According to him, the syndicate’s modus operandi is to drive a company’s share price down to damage its reputation, trigger a change in control — even if indirect — and ultimately force a delisting or liquidation. Once the business is distressed, he claims, the group strips the assets or recapitalises them at “forced sale or nominal value” for its own benefit.
In response to questions from the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, Ngebulana said Rebosis experienced “a significant run on the share price in 2019, which we believed was being manipulated for ulterior motives”, a concern they reported to the JSE at the time. He declined, however, to be drawn into Mantengu’s allegations involving Rebosis, arguing that the recordings at the centre of the claims are illegal, unreliable and appear to have been tampered with. He added that he had no incentive to manipulate the share price, noting that doing so would have served no purpose and that, as the company’s largest shareholder, he ultimately stood to lose substantial value through its liquidation.
In one recorded conversation, Miller says, the conspirators can even be heard talking about having to kill anyone who leaked their plans. Mantengu has handed over these recordings to the Hawks. According to an affidavit compiled by Miller’s team, the individuals on the recordings also discuss previous share price manipulations and describe, in detail, how they avoid detection — using front companies, nominee accounts and co-ordinated trading across multiple accounts to conceal the source of the orders.
Miller contends that Rebosis was one of several companies victimised in this fashion. “We know of several,” he says, claiming that other JSE-listed firms — especially in the property and mining sectors — have privately reported similar patterns. He even hints that a dual-listed blue-chip company is among them, though he won’t name it.
Pure Hollywood?
It all sounds a bit like a Hollywood plot, and under normal circumstances one might be inclined to dismiss it as implausible. But Mantengu has taken extraordinary steps to back up its claims, spending 18 months conducting its own internal investigation with the assistance of private forensic specialists.
The most controversial revelation from that process landed in early November, when Mantengu said it had received evidence implicating senior JSE personnel in the scheme. In a letter to shareholders, also published as a sponsored article in Business Day, Mantengu claimed it had obtained a series of e-mails — later revealed to be screenshots rather than the original, or “native”, e-mails — allegedly provided by a whistleblower and purporting to link two JSE nonexecutive directors to the syndicate.
One e-mail is addressed to “[email protected]” and, according to Mantengu, was written by a JSE insider. In it, the author frets: “Hi. Pressure is mounting as Mantengu continues to challenge and appears to be getting more info. Talk to Zunaid and get him to back off. Leave Davies and Shayi to me. They know about the crypto accounts. IWK.”
Mantengu argues that the references to “Davies”, “Shayi” and “IWK” may point to senior JSE personnel — specifically Shaun Davies (director of market regulation), Jacob Shayi (senior manager for surveillance), and nonexecutive director Ian Kirk, but this interpretation rests solely on the names and initials mentioned, with no corroborating evidence.
And at present, there is no independent verification that the e-mails are authentic, beyond Mantengu’s claim that one of the addresses belongs to JSE nonexecutive director Zarina Bassa — a claim she has explicitly denied, citing evidence from her e-mail service provider confirming she did not send the message. A forensic report commissioned by the JSE also indicates that the IWK email address belongs to an American businessman in Pennsylvania.
JSE rebuttal
The JSE, for its part, has called Mantengu’s claims against its staff and executives “false and without merit”, denying in the strongest possible terms that anyone at the JSE was involved in criminal activity or share manipulation. It also pointed out that the FSCA investigation found no evidence supporting Mantengu’s claims.
The JSE subsequently approached the Joburg high court to compel Mantengu to hand over the alleged e-mail evidence and to stop the company from making further claims of criminal conduct on the JSE’s part. The JSE’s counsel, advocate Ian Green, argued that Mantengu had been misled by spoofed e-mails and that circulating false information about the market regulator posed a systemic risk to market integrity.
Acting judge S Kruger found the matter too extensive and complex for the urgent roll, describing it as a “tangled web” of accusations and denials that should be dealt with in the ordinary opposed motion court. However, Kruger granted an interim interdict barring Mantengu and Miller from making any further allegations implicating the JSE or its staff in unlawful share manipulation activities.
The [JSE] argues that section 73 of the Financial Markets Act (FMA) prevents it from disclosing such information to third parties
Another point of contention is Mantengu’s attempt to draw a link between Bassa and Moti. Mantengu bases this on the fact that Bassa’s husband, Ian Bird, served as chair of junior miner Sable Exploration & Mining from April 2023 until his resignation on November 10 2025. Sable’s CEO is Ulrich Bester — a former Mantengu CFO whom Miller has previously accused of being part of the alleged share manipulation syndicate, a claim Bester has vigorously denied.
Sable rejected the allegations unequivocally, saying the company and its board have neither engaged in nor been party to any form of market manipulation. It described the claims as “entirely unfounded” and “vexatious and defamatory”.
Miller, however, argues it’s all merely a symptom of a broader issue: that an inherent conflict of interest exists because the very institution Mantengu has accused — the JSE — is also the custodian of the data required to prove or disprove the allegations.
One of Mantengu’s frustrations has been its lack of insight into the raw, underlying transactional data that shows who traded Mantengu shares with whom, when and in what volumes. In theory, listed companies can request beneficial ownership information, but that only reveals who holds the shares at a point in time. It does not show how those shares moved between counterparties or whether trades were linked.
When asked why Mantengu could not access that granular data, the JSE tells the FM it is legally prohibited from releasing “confidential information of the investing public”. The exchange argues that section 73 of the Financial Markets Act (FMA) prevents it from disclosing such information to third parties, adding that confidentiality of trading data is a global standard to protect investors’ proprietary trading strategies and prevent market abuse.
The JSE further notes that Mantengu never made a formal subpoena or a request for the data under the Promotion of Access to Information Act. Had the company needed the information for legal proceedings, says the JSE, there are established court processes, such as subpoenas, to compel disclosure.
Truth from fiction
So where does the truth lie?
On the one hand, the simplest explanation for Mantengu’s depressed share price — that the share register almost doubled in two years, while its early-stage mining operations encountered the usual start-up stumbles — remains a persuasive narrative. It doesn’t require believing in secret meetings, encrypted e-mails or crooked executives.
On the other hand, South Africa’s corporate landscape has seen stranger things. Titans of industry have turned out to be fraudsters; police officers have been exposed as hired guns for crime bosses. The lines between legitimate business and the underworld can blur in perplexing ways.
Mantengu’s allegations, as extreme as they sound, tap into a deep well of mistrust about corruption in South Africa. Miller’s crusade, at minimum, raises questions about the integrity of the marketplace. If there is any truth to the idea of a syndicate systematically preying on listed companies, it would be a great shock and represent a grave threat to investor confidence.
Oversight must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done
Of course, the two explanations are not mutually exclusive — both could be true at the same time. And while some allegations may ultimately prove to be red herrings, others may carry more weight. The Rebosis story appears especially troubling.
There’s no firm evidence yet that the Rebosis allegations are linked to Mantengu’s claims — the overlap may be coincidental. Still, it’s worth noting that, according to an amaBhungane investigation published by Daily Maverick and News24, the evidence for share price rigging at Rebosis is based on recorded conversations and related documents.
Notably, the JSE’s surveillance systems did not appear to detect any of the alleged suspicious trading. That raises a broader question: if people are determined to manipulate share prices, can such activity be captured by standard transaction monitoring? Mantengu’s criticism — and the reason it sought to interdict the FSCA from releasing its report — is that the regulator’s investigation was, in its view, too narrow and failed to probe deeply enough.
Oversight must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done. Otherwise, the response risks sounding like a technocratic recital of rules from a regulator operating in an ivory tower, insulated from the on-the-ground realities, invoking procedural language rather than confronting the substance of the concern.
Reforming those laws, however, carries its own dangers. Allowing broader access to trading data — even under strict supervision by auditors or independent experts — would conflict with international standards and could unsettle foreign investors.
Yet the opposite risk is equally serious. Even if today’s custodians of granular market data act with integrity, what happens if the exchange or the FSCA becomes compromised in future? Aside from the slow and uncertain route of a court application — often unproductive when evidence is circumstantial — what external checks and balances exist to ensure integrity? In societies where corruption is systemic, confidentiality can become a convenient shield for misconduct.
In trying to place the Mantengu case in historical context, the FM put a related question to both the JSE and the FSCA, referring to the allegations of share price manipulation that surfaced several years ago after 36One Asset Management and other large investors requested a formal probe into unusual trading in the Resilient group of companies.
At the time, media reports claimed that a former groundsman at Kyalami Schools had somehow come to hold more than R1bn worth of shares in Greenbay and Resilient through four obscure companies — an astonishing revelation that raised serious questions about who was really behind the trades, and why.
The FSCA has no control over what is published by the media regarding listed companies
When asked if the groundsman matter had ever been fully investigated, concluded and publicly explained, the FSCA responded curtly: “The FSCA has no control over what is published by the media regarding listed companies. The allegations referenced in the media, including those relating to a former groundsman at Kyalami Schools, were the subject of a thorough FSCA investigation. Upon completion of that investigation, it was found that there was no contravention of section 80 of the FMA.”
No attempt to explain a scenario that left the trading public bewildered — only a perfunctory statement that no laws had been contravened.
Is that good enough — or in the public interest?
What is clear is that Mantengu now finds itself in a similar position: raising questions about trading patterns it believes are suspicious, while the entities with the investigative power and access to trading data insist that nothing is amiss. Whether this is another case where the market must simply “accept the finding and move on”, or the Mantengu saga forces a rethink on greater transparency by the JSE, remains to be seen.
This article first appeared in the Financial Mail.
