Werksmans Attorneys director Bulelwa Mabasa has been appointed a non-executive director of the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), Africa’s largest asset manager. The state-owned company is still rebuilding its board after a turbulent year.
Mabasa joins alongside Dr Mugwena John Maluleke, Lindiwe Martha Motshwane and Reuben Mpono Maleka, following Cabinet approval announced in September. The four add to the eight-member board that Cabinet installed on 30 July after the previous board collapsed. That board is chaired by Seiso Mohai, Deputy Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation.
The previous board unravelled in mid-2026. Its chairperson, Deputy Finance Minister David Masondo, became the sixth director to resign. He stepped down before a meeting at which Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana was reportedly set to dissolve the board. The resignations followed allegations of governance failures, conflicts of interest and irregularities in the long-running Lanseria Airport dispute.
| PIC at a glance | Figure |
|---|---|
| Client assets, 31 March 2026 | R3.657trn (+20%) |
| Peak assets, February 2026 | R3.958trn |
| Assets, 31 August 2026 | R3.819trn |
| GEPF assets managed | R3.244trn (88.7% of total) |
| UIF assets managed | R195bn (+14.71%) |
| Net client outflows, 2025/26 | R172bn |
| Operating expenses | R1.427bn (+15%) |
| Unlisted return, excluding property | -0.2% |
In July the former board placed chief executive Patrick Dlamini on precautionary suspension over whistleblower allegations about unlisted investments. The High Court ordered his reinstatement on 4 August. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority has opened an investigation under section 135 of the Financial Sector Regulation Act. Separately, the Auditor-General referred a material irregularity to the Special Investigating Unit, involving insufficient due diligence on an investment.
The stakes are large. The PIC managed R3.657 trillion in client assets at 31 March 2026, up R608 billion in a year, driven mainly by a 33.6% rally in the JSE All Share Index. The Government Employees Pension Fund accounts for more than 88.7% of that total, and the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s assets rose to R195 billion. Assets peaked at R3.958 trillion in February. Middle East tensions then wiped out more than R300 billion within weeks, and assets recovered to R3.819 trillion by the end of August. Operating expenses rose 15% to R1.427 billion. The unlisted portfolio, excluding property, returned -0.2%.
Mabasa heads the land reform practice at Werksmans, which she joined as a director in 2008, and sits on the firm’s elected executive committee. She has more than two decades of legal experience. Her work covers land reform, restitution and tenure law, constitutional and administrative law, mining litigation and commercial disputes.
In 2018 President Cyril Ramaphosa named her to his Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture. According to the announcement of her PIC appointment, she was the only attorney on the panel. She is also the author of My Land Obsession, a book on the land question, land reform and the legal and social issues around ownership.
Her background in property rights, mining and public policy is relevant to an investor with large exposure to listed mining shares, property and unlisted deals. The PIC’s own priorities point the same way. Dlamini has said the operating model for its unlisted and unlisted property portfolios is under review, and a revised strategy for both is due before the board at the end of October.
Maluleke has served on the PIC board before. He was named to the interim board that National Treasury appointed in July 2019, when he was general secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union. Teachers make up a large share of the public servants whose pensions the PIC invests through the GEPF.
The enlarged board must now oversee the regulatory probes, Dlamini’s contested position and the unlisted strategy review. It also has to steady an institution whose largest client relies on it to invest the retirement savings of more than a million public servants.