[miningmx.com] – SUSAN Shabangu hinted at a coal export conference in January that the months preceding South Africa’s national election on May 7 would be her last in office; at least as mines minister.
It has been a five-year term characterised by volatility with Shabangu endorsing the business imperatives of the mining sector, and then sharply calling its leaders to book for over-stepping the mark.
Even before Shabangu was appointed mines minister, she had a way of attracting the headline writers. Whilst deputy safety and security minister she told police services at Danville in 2008: “I want no warning shots. You have one shot and it must be a kill shot.’
Here’s a brief sally through the high and the low-lights of Shabangu’s time as mines minister.
May 2009:
Shabangu tells the mining industry in her inaugural address at the annual general meeting of the Chamber of Mines that there’s a lot of BEE fronting in the mining industry. She warned them: “You just pray that I die tomorrow – then you’ll survive. If I am alive, you’re still in trouble.’ Nothing like first impressions.
February 2012:
Shabangu showed her softer side by soothing the nerves of panicking mining investors at the Mining Indaba. Nationalisation of the mines – a concept then in good voice owing to the efforts of ANC Youth League president, Julius Malema – would happen “… maybe when I’m dead, and rest assured I’m not dying next week’.
August 2013:
Days after the Marikana massacre in which 35 miners were shot by police on the property of UK-listed Lonmin after staging a protest over wages in the platinum sector, Shabangu told an Australian investment conference the event was due to “bad elements in our society’ and that South Africa was “open for business’.
November 2013:
Threatened to dispossess Anglo American of all its mining licences in South Africa after its listed subsidiary, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), went public with restructuring plans for its Rustenburg operations. She later labelled Amplats CEO, Chris Griffith “arrogant’ and then in January 2014 commented on the fracas saying Anglo was an errant child that “had to be disciplined’.
January 2014:
Shabangu told an Anglo Thermal Coal executive at a packed coal conference that his view it took too long to have mining projects permitted that he was obsessively pessimistic about South Africa’s regulatory framework. “I am worried about what you paint here that we are far from this,’ she said to stunned conference delegates. “You continue to paint a gloomy picture when we have made so much progress in this space.’
