Mysol: thirty years in the pit, then a mining company of his own, and a bonus for every employee
Solly Soka Madibela, known as Mysol, built MySol Holdings & Logistics in the chrome belt of South Africa’s North West. He also funds bursaries and training through the MySol Foundation, and made headlines for gifting his staff R20,000 each.
Most stories about business success start with a bold idea. This one starts with a pit. Solly Soka Madibela, popularly known as Mysol, spent more than thirty years working in open-cast mining before putting his own name over the door. In 2018, he founded MySol Holdings & Logistics, a contractor working in the chrome mining industry in South Africa’s North West province.
What the company does
MySol Holdings provides the heavy, practical services that keep a mine moving: drilling and blasting, loading and hauling, crushing and screening, mine rehabilitation and bulk earthworks. Profiles describe it as a black-owned business with Madibela as sole owner and chief executive, responsible for vision, strategy and day-to-day operations. One profile reports that it works at the Buffelsfontein West open-cast mine, which is managed by Samancor.
Growth has been visible in the equipment. In early 2025 the company reportedly added 30 Volvo articulated haulers and 10 Volvo excavators to its chrome mining fleet, supported by finance and servicing from partners including Babcock. In contracting, a fleet is both the product and the balance sheet, so the size of the order says something about the trust lenders and suppliers place in a young business.
Giving back
Madibela is also associated with the MySol Foundation, a non-profit focused on community development and education. Its stated programmes include bursaries for students who face financial exclusion, skills training such as driving licences and operator certification for the machines the industry depends on, and donations of food parcels and school uniforms to orphanages and low-income families. Sources differ on whether he founded or co-founded the foundation.
We have not found published figures for how many students, trainees or families have been reached, and we would rather say so than guess. We are asking the foundation for numbers and will update this story when we have them.
A birthday gift that went viral
In May 2026, a video from MySol’s staff circulated on social media showing employees learning that they would each receive R20,000 to mark their boss’s 44th birthday, according to a report by Briefly News. The article does not say how many people were paid.
Why it is worth telling
The Mysol story is a reminder that African wealth is not only built in apps and funds. It is built in quarries, on haul roads and in workshops, by people who learn an industry from the bottom and then own a piece of it. It is also a story about what a founder does once the business works: he trains, funds and shares. The best measure of that, for readers and for Madibela himself, will be the numbers behind the generosity. We will keep reporting.
In pictures
