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The Joburg Indaba South African Mining Hall of Fame has welcomed Natascha Viljoen, President and Chief Executive Officer of Newmont Corporation, recognising more than 30 years of leadership that runs from the processing plants of South Africa to the helm of the world’s leading gold company.
Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe attended the induction, alongside industry leaders, fellow Hall of Fame members and Viljoen’s family. Accepting the honour, Viljoen gave the credit to the people who work in the industry’s mines and plants. “The fact that I have this opportunity is 100% due to the people sitting in this room and the people working in our mines and in our plants. Those are the people who make this possible. Through my career, they are also the people I have learned the most from: the people who actually took the time to teach me,” said Viljoen.
A second generation miner, Viljoen recalled going to work as a child with her father, a winding engine driver. She noted, “I didn’t understand much about geology or metallurgy. I just saw ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The ingenuity, the problem solving, the technology and above all, the teamwork. That got under my skin.” Her early years as a metallurgical engineer, she said, then taught her humility.
“The processing plant was a wonderful teacher. It doesn’t care about your title. The physics are not impressed by hierarchy and you can’t solve a metallurgical balance with optimism. It’s important that we respect experience and never confuse a title with knowledge and understanding of the industry,” said Viljoen. She also asked for an honest account of the industry’s past. Viljoen added, “As South Africa, we’ve achieved remarkable things. We developed skills and built industries. But there was also exclusion. We separated families, at a profound human cost. Both these truths belong in an honest account of the industry that formed me.”
Recalling the Marikana tragedy, which happened while she was at Lonmin, she said the lives lost must not be forgotten. “It’s important that we remember those who died and the families and communities still feeling that loss. I carry that tragedy with humility. Mining is part of society and how we mine matters just as much as whether we mine,” stated Viljoen. She closed by thanking her parents, husband, children, sister and the mentors, colleagues, operators, artisans, engineers and supervisors who “taught me what mining really means”.
The Chairperson of the Joburg Indaba, Bernard Swanepoel, presented the award. “Tonight we have the phenomenal privilege of inducting another leader of real quality, someone we are so proud of. It is perfectly deserved. Natascha now joins some of the finest South African leaders the mining industry has ever produced,” said Swanepoel.
Viljoen joined Anglo American Platinum, now Valterra Platinum, as Chief Executive Officer in 2020, during the pandemic and a period of severe load shedding. Under her leadership the Anglo Converter Plant was repaired and recommissioned ahead of schedule and by 2021 it was processing record volumes. She also put the proposed third concentrator at Mogalakwena through tougher feasibility testing, even as platinum group metal prices rose. In 2023 she joined Newmont as Chief Operating Officer, before becoming the first woman to lead the company as Chief Executive Officer in its history of more than 100 years.
She joins a group of about 20 industry leaders in the Hall of Fame, which honours leaders whose resilience, vision and decades of influence have made a lasting impact on South Africa’s mining industry. Recent inductees include Thungela Resources Chief Executive Officer July Ndlovu in 2025, Harmony Gold Chief Executive Officer Peter Steenkamp in 2024 and Roger Baxter in 2024, who is Chairperson of Southern Palladium and a former Chief Executive Officer of Minerals Council South Africa. Earlier members include former Anglo American Chief Executive Officer Mark Cutifani in 2019, Neal Froneman, Sipho Nkosi and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
Viljoen is a member of the Newmont Board of Directors and has more than 30 years of international mining experience across several commodities, operations and continents. Before Newmont she was a member of the Anglo American plc Group Management Committee and she held technical and senior leadership roles at Anglo American, BHP and Lonmin. A metallurgical engineer, she holds a Bachelor of Engineering from North-West University and an Executive MBA from the University of Cape Town.
