[miningmx.com] – AQUILA Steel, which is owned by China’s Baosteel, is to take South African mines minister, Ngoako Ramatlhodi, to court after its appeal against a ministerial decision to set aside its mining and prospecting rights failed.
Ramalthodi set aside Aquila’s Avontuur prospecting right in the Northern Cape and not to award Aquila a mining right for Gravenhage, a manganese project on which the firm had spent about R150m.
Aquila appealed the decision but said in an announcement today that the process failed after some 20 months of deliberations. Aquila is, therefore, seeking a judicial review of the minister’s decisions in the Pretoria High Court.
“Regrettably, Aquila has now been left with no alternative but to commence legal proceedings seeking a judicial review of the minister’s decisions in order to protect its security of tenure,” the company said in an announcement.
The minister’s Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) is already contesting the interpretation of the Mining Charter in court after the Chamber of Mines disagreed with the DMR’s view that the majority of miners had failed to meet empowerment goals.
In respect of Gravenhage, the minister has upheld an earlier decision to grant an overlapping mining right to ZIZA – a company “… which appears to be connected with PAMDC,” said Aquila. PAMDC or Pan African Mineral Development Company was incorporated in 2007 and is owned by the governments of South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
According to Aquila, PAMDC’s overlapping prospecting right appears, from the documentation, to have been executed on 19 November 2011, which is over five years after a prospecting right over parts of the same areas was granted to Aquila.
“The alleged grant was also almost one year after Aquila’s Mining Right Application was accepted by the DMR, on 22 December 2010,” the company said.
Before the Baosteel takeover, Aquila Resources was considering investing up to $480m in South Africa of which $180m would be on the proposed 1.5 million tonne/year (mtpa) manganese mine, and between $215m and $300m on Thabazimbi, an iron ore prospect containing an estimated 37.1mt in measured resources.
