Naamsa has appointed Mncane Mthunzi as chief executive with effect from Monday, filling a post that has been vacant since Mikel Mabasa stepped down abruptly in April after more than six years in the job.
Mabasa left “to pursue personal interests outside the organisation”, in the industry body’s words at the time. It named no successor and gave no departure date. Chief operations officer Shinny Gobiyeza was appointed interim CEO later that month and now returns to her substantive role.
Publicly available records put Mthunzi as a former chief executive of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa, which would give him experience running an industry association, and previously chief operations officer at Edcon. He has also served as strategy lead on the presidency’s red tape reduction project.
He arrives at the worst moment for South African vehicle exports in a generation. A 25% sectoral tariff imposed by the US under section 232 of its Trade Expansion Act took effect on imported vehicles in April 2025 and on components a month later. Naamsa warned at the time that the measures could decimate the export industry, calling it “a socioeconomic crisis in the making”.
Vehicle exports to the US fell 74% in 2025, from 25 544 units to 6 530, and kept falling: Naamsa’s own half-year figures show a further 36% decline in the first half of 2026. Almost all of the lost volume is Mercedes-Benz C-Class cars built at East London, a plant that suspended production for two months in mid-2025 and that anchors the economy of the Eastern Cape city.
The two-year extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act signed in Washington last week does not fix this. Agoa duty-free access does not override a section 232 duty, so the 25% stands regardless. In 2024, before the tariffs, the automotive sector accounted for 64% of all Agoa trade between the two countries and R28.6-billion in export revenue.
Transition to NEVs
Manufacturers have so far absorbed the blow by selling elsewhere — total exports still reached a record 414 268 units in 2025 — but that cushion is thinning. Exports fell 5% year on year in the second quarter of 2026 and were 7.6% down across the first half, with port congestion severe enough that some suppliers have been airfreighting components to keep production lines running.
The second front is the transition to new energy vehicles, where the industry has spent years asking government for a policy framework and getting fragments of one. Toyota South Africa CEO Andrew Kirby warned in February that without urgent action the local motoring industry faced deindustrialisation. Mabasa’s own parting argument, made repeatedly, was that the department of trade, industry and competition lacked the capacity to support the sector properly.
Meanwhile the domestic market is being reshaped underneath the manufacturers. Chinese brands have taken a substantial share of the sub-R400 000 segment that most South Africans actually buy, battery-electric sales have accelerated sharply this year off the back of the fuel price spike, and almost none of those vehicles are built here.
Naamsa president Peter van Binsbergen, who is also CEO of BMW Group South Africa, said in a statement that the appointment comes at “a defining moment”.
“We are entering a period that will fundamentally determine the future structure and competitiveness of our sector, and we require strong, decisive and strategic leadership to navigate it,” he said.
“His mandate is therefore much bigger than leading an industry association. It is about serving our members while helping shape the conditions under which one of South Africa’s most important industrial sectors can compete, transform and grow globally.”
Mthunzi struck a similar tone in the statement. “We cannot assume that the successes of the past will automatically secure our future,” he said. “South Africa must compete decisively for the investment, technology, skills, markets and opportunities that will define the next generation of mobility.”
He said his priority would be to keep Naamsa “a strong, influential and unified voice” for the industry, one that “engages constructively with government, challenges where necessary, and advances practical solutions”.
Naamsa set out eight strategic priorities for the new CEO, spanning competitiveness, investment retention, localisation, the NEV transition, export market development, skills, transformation, and closer coordination between industry, government and organised labour.
The body represents 44 companies that manufacture, assemble, distribute and import new vehicles. It puts the automotive industry at 5.2% of GDP and 23.8% of national manufacturing output, with exports of R291-billion in 2025 across 154 markets and 113 000 people directly employed in manufacturing. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
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