February 2014
MODERN MINING
33
EVENTS
“address loopholes identified in various court
judgements” and “further entrench and aug-
ment the principle of security of tenure as an
integral part of South Africa’s mining regula-
tory framework.”
On the subject of beneficiation, she pointed
out that “continued exportation of unprocessed
minerals denies South Africa the possibility for
skilled employment, skills development and
contribution to the fiscus needed to address our
developmental imperatives” but emphasised
that “no mining company is either required to
beneficiate or is forced to subsidise the manu-
facturing industry.”
Turning to
transformation
within the South
African mining industry, she described this as
“a societal imperative to redress centuries of
deliberate exclusion of the black majority from
the mainstream economy” and told her audi-
ence that the process would continue. As she
said, “I have established that some companies
have designed interim transformation solu-
tions that end this year, with the expectation
that 2014 would mark the end of transforma-
tion. Nothing could be further from the truth
– in fact, transformation remains an imperative
of government and must be seen as a business
imperative in the South African context.”
Shabangu’s speech had a
mixed reception
from delegates, with some saying that it had
been disappointing and had made very little
effort to address the critical issues surrounding
the beleaguered mining industry (a charge she
has since refuted in a letter to ‘Business Day’).
Tony Zoghby
, Partner and Southern African
Mining Leader: Assurance at professional ser-
vices firm Deloitte, expressed a typical view
when he said – from the sidelines of the con-
ference – that the Minister had not decisively
addressed continuing labour relations chal-
lenges in the mining sector, especially the
platinum sector, which was recently brought to
a halt by 70 000 striking members of AMCU.
“The Minister talks about the labour framework
and policies that are meant to govern the sec-
tor, but we are not seeing the benefits of that
framework on the ground just yet,” he said. He
did, however, commend the Minister’s positive
attitude to shale gas and petroleum exploration
and development.
In a keynote panel discussion on the
outlook
for African mining
just after the Minister’s
speech,
Roger Baxter
, Chief Operating Officer
of the Chamber of Mines of South Africa, put
the cost of the strikes in platinum mining to the
country as a whole at R400 million a day. He
said 45 % of the platinum mining sector was
either marginal or loss-making and warned
that AMCU’s wage demands were unafford-
able. One of his co-panelists, Chicago-based
economist
David Hale
, in a speech peppered
with statistics, presented a generally optimis-
tic view of Africa’s future, but noted that its
growth was coming off a low base with sub-
Saharan Africa being responsible for just 2,5 %
of global economic output. He noted also that
Nigeria – which recently, in a bold and sig-
nificant move, had privatised its electricity
Far left:
Jonathan Moore,
Senior Vice-President and
Managing Director of
Mining Indaba LLC, with
Patricia de Lille, Mayor of
Cape Town.
Left:
Ivanhoe’s Robert
Friedland gave an account
of his company’s three key
projects in South Africa and
the DRC.
ning’s
global pullback
