South Africa's financial regulator has trained its sights on the biggest investor in the country. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority said late on Tuesday it will investigate the Public Investment Corporation — the state-owned manager of more than R3-trillion, most of it government workers' pension savings, and the single largest shareholder on the JSE. It is a rare move for one arm of the state to formally probe another, and a measure of how seriously the regulator is taking the turmoil at the fund.
What triggered it
The timing is no accident. A day earlier the PIC board suspended chief executive Patrick Dlamini, barely a year into a job he took in June 2025 with a mandate to clean up the fund's troubled unlisted investment book, the Isibaya Fund, which has been dogged by underperformance and poor investments for years. The board said it wanted to give Dlamini space to answer allegations of impropriety raised in a whistleblower report. His acting investment chief, August van Heerden, is also leaving — five months after the exit of his predecessor, Kabelo Rikhotso. The FSCA said “events over recent months raise serious questions” about whether the fund is upholding the standards of governance and transparency expected of it, and confirmed it is acting under section 135 of the Financial Sector Regulation Act, the provision that lets it formally examine a financial institution.
Why every South African has a stake
The PIC is not a household name, but it manages the retirement money of government workers across the public service, which is why its stability matters far beyond its Pretoria headquarters. The concerns are not new: last month PIC chair and deputy finance minister David Masondo asked the Special Investigating Unit to review an empowerment deal that ended in the fund paying out more than R400 million.
Because the PIC holds commanding stakes across the companies that make up the JSE, a wobble in confidence there does not stay contained — it touches the savings of millions and can ripple through the market as a whole. The regulator says the fund bears “heightened responsibilities” precisely because it guards public money. What the investigation turns up will shape trust in an institution most South Africans never think about, but quietly depend on.
