JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa’s mining problem has been the failure of accountable and transparent regulation, with the desire to achieve race transformation leading to secrecy.
If mineral licencing had to be applied for publicly on the Internet and the Department of Mineral Resources had to, in turn, respond publicly, much of the problem would be solved. But from both sides, South Africans have abused race to create phoney partnerships and phoney transactions, often in darkness.
“That’s what we now need to fix in South Africa,” Business Leadership South Africa outgoing chairperson Bobby Godsell said to applause in response to a question from the floor at Wednesday’s African Mining Network dinner, attended by Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online.
The former AngloGold Ashanti CEO saw no reason why the State could not regulate minerals in an open, accountable and honest way and said in responding to the question on how much-needed minerals exploration could be stimulated, that a major public-sector contribution was needed to start exploration off by providing information on where different minerals are or may be, which could then be followed by the private sector concentrating on the realisation of commercial value.
He believed it possible to establish public-private exploration partnerships in which every private-sector mining activity enhanced the basic public knowledge of South Africa’s and Africa’s mineral resources while still allowing companies to preserve their own commercial interests.
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