[miningmx.com] — The state-owned mining company that will spearhead the government’s foray into the mining sector will be located in the department of public enterprises, according to ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe.
Answering questions from the floor at a debate hosted by the Institute for Democracy in SA (Idasa) on Tuesday evening, Mantashe explained some of his party’s rationale for wanting the state to have a greater role in the mining sector.
Other participants in the debate were the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) Parliamentary leader, Athol Trollip, City Press editor Ferial Haffajee, and Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich.
“The company (African Exploration Mining and Finance Corporation) is currently with the department of energy and I can tell you with my eyes closed that it will be located within the department of public enterprises,” he said.
Mantashe was asked if he saw no conflict between the state owning and regulating the mining sector.
Mantashe’s answer was “no” as the department of minerals would remain the department that regulated the sector.
The Idasa debate was supposed to focus on President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address delivered last week. In the address, the president named the state-owned mining company as being the vehicle for the state’s involvement in the sector.
Mantashe said he could not understand why nationalisation or expanding the role of the state in the mining sector “had become a swear word in SA”.
He said the ANC had to explain to its constituency continuously why SA exported its mineral wealth for others to make profits off in the beneficiation processes.
“We have a country that is endowed with minerals, yet the people who extract them are living in abject poverty. We cannot explain this anymore,” he said.
Mantashe said the ANC had researched how many other countries had handled the state’s role in mining. He named Namibia, Botswana, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Sweden, Norway and Australia.
Haffajee said during the debate that she was uncomfortable with the expanded role of the state in the economy.
She said that, while there could be a role for the state in mining, she was somewhat skeptical.
“Those may be the best examples, where the state does hold some of those rights, but this is very different [from what] the ANC, led by the Youth League president, [wants], which is more of [the] Venezuelan example. And this shows that some interest groups have a stranglehold on government,” she said.
