[miningmx.com] — THE mining industry was being ambushed because it would be impossible to achieve the targets of the new mining charter by 2014.
Mining legal expert Hulme Scholes again implored the industry to become more involved in the nationalisation debate, saying it was taking place unilaterally and dominated by the legal fraternity.
The new mining charter’s targets require 26% of all vote-carrying shareholding, all economic interests and net ungeared effects to be in the hands of previously disadvantaged by 2014, Scholes said on Friday.
It was unthinkable that these targets would be achieved – and that will be the excuse for nationalisation, said Scholes.
The current debate on nationalisation and state intervention in the mining industry was being conducted entirely unilaterally, without economically feasible argumentation, Scholes said.
He has represented the industry several times in official contacts with government and was closely involved in the development of the current minerals legislation leading to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act.
The submissions on minerals legislation were totally dominated by legal experts. All comments and presentations regarding legislation were made by legal representatives, one after another, he said.
Scholes believed it was extremely important for mining companies themselves to talk to government about nationalisation, saying there has been too much apathy on the part of the mining industry.
“Government does not want to be lectured to by legal experts armed with scholarly documents; it wants to speak to the mines themselves,” Scholes said.
Government regards the Chamber of Mines as a group of white men in suits from a white-dominated industry coming to speak to it about economic policy and their concerns.
“The Chamber is not guilty of that, but it has become a discredited and ineffective organisation,” said Scholes. “The Chamber produced six sets of commentary on the code of conduct for the mining industry.
“From a legal point of view the code is a messy document, but all comments were ignored and the original draft was accepted by government and published in the Government Gazette,” he said.
Scholes reckons nationalisation of the mining industry is inevitable, but this will come about as “radical government intervention in industry by a state mining company’.
The only legislation still necessary to make this possible is the Expropriation Bill, which would initiate expropriation in the public interest. It was presented to parliament in April 2008, but was subsequently withdrawn.
Scholes believes the Chinese government has declared itself ready to provide money to a state mining company to pay for the expropriation of mines.
“The Chinese have a 1 000-year view on resources,” he said. “They choose to start at government level when they arrive in a country. That’s the way they think and act.”
In October, adviser to Mines Minister Susan Shabangu, Iraj Abedian, said Scholes’ research on the issue was factually wrong on a number of points, in particular the mining industry’s alleged lack of involvement in drawing up the new legislation.
“Scholes is muddying the waters, and you have to question his motivation in doing this,” Abedian said. “His views are problematic and not good for the South African mining sector or the country as a whole.”
– Sake24
