Posted on August 22, 2011
Divergent views on the local mining industry’s progress with implementing the Mining Charter were heard at a recent GIBS Forum on this subject.
Dr Frans Barker, senior executive of the Chamber of Mines, said the revised Mining Charter that was gazetted in September last year was a great improvement on the first Mining Charter gazetted in October 2002 and the industry was still finding its feet with regards to the implementation of some aspects.
He said all the Chamber’s members achieved the objective of 15% ownership by historically disadvantaged South Africans last year, but were still lagging behind with employment equity at top management level. However, Peter Temane, managing director of Masingita Mining, a junior miner, said only 4% of mining companies in South Africa were owned by black companies and the rest were owned by multinationals. He said that if real transformation had taken place, there would not have been a call for the nationalisation of mines.
The National Union of Mineworkers’ Madoda Sambatha felt the Mining Charter was a “minimum plan” of government that has made individuals rich. He added the Charter’s “non-alignment” with the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act remained a weakness.
In terms of nationalising mines, Barker said he had no objections to a state mining company that could remove obstacles that hinder both BEE players and other mining companies, but the talk of nationalisation was one of the obstacles to growth in the industry. Sambatha said he supported nationalisation informed by developmental imperatives, for example the “use of iron ore to mitigate exorbitant steel prices”.
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