THE Minerals Council South Africa on Wednesday expressed concerns about the country’s new minerals cadastre which is being rolled out by the government.
“The longer it takes to be delivered, the less confident we become in terms of what the final product will look like,” said Mzila Mthenjane, CEO of the Minerals Council. “And unfortunately, the longer it takes, the more speculation we hear in terms of why it is not being delivered on time.”
Mines minister Gwede Mantashe delayed the implementation of an exploration rights and mining licence management system in July last year. But that was only the latest in a series of missed deadlines dating from 2024 when Government said a consortium led by Canada’s Pacific GeoTech Systems would design a new cadastre.
It was intended to replace SAMRAD – the South African Mineral Resources Administration System – which has been found to be suboptimal in that it lacks transparency and cannot tackle the complex demands of minerals rights ownership. The mining industry said off-the-shelf software could be customised to the industry’s needs, but Government opted for a new build project.
The outcome is that the rollout of the new cadastre began in October in the Western Cape, a province not renowned for mineral resources but considered by Government to be an ideal soft launch aimed at ironing out problems. The Minerals Council said it had asked for a demonstration of the cadastre, but had been ignored.
“We’ve asked the DMPR (department of minerals and petroleum resources) to come and present to the Minerals Council an update on progress with the implementation of the cadastre,” said Mthenjane.
“The last demonstration we saw was when it was being given to Parliament, but that did not give us an opportunity to be interactive in terms of asking questions.
“So we continue to ask the DMPR to come and engage directly with us, so that we can get a real understanding of the nature and the success they report in terms of where it has been implemented in the Western Cape.
“That will give us a good basis to understand what the potential challenges may be when they roll out the cadastre in the more complex mining regions,” he said.
Nagging worries about MPRDA
Mthenjane was speaking at the Mineral Council’s AGM in Johannesburg where the council president, Paul Dunne, also acknowledged worries about how proposed amendments to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002 would land.
An amendment Bill was gazetted in Parliament on May 20 last year amid major consternation in the mining industry as it seemed to revisit matters that last time drove government and the council to a court contest, which the council won.
Amendments proposed enabling the minister the power to create new regulations in the future governing empowerment targets. Another aspect relating to the processing of dumps could be deemed unconstitutional as it would be expropriation of an movable asset. A third aspect, demanding empowerment targets of exploration companies, was later withdrawn.
Dunne told Miningmx that while discussions with the Department of Mineral Resources had been constructive, he had nagging doubts.
“Engagements with the department and the minister on a face-to-face basis have been both professional and productive,” he said. “What still sits in the back of our minds and worries us is that we end up with a surprise whereby the second draft of the amendment bill does not fully or completely represent those engagements,” he said.
Dunne said the council expected the second draft of the amendment bill before the year-end, adding that the process was inevitably slow.
“Why we should be concerned is that whilst time moves on, the uncertainty of certain policy remains, and that is not conducive, as we said at the time, to investment, and perhaps even more importantly in some respects, to the need for employment in South Africa,” he said.
“Mining investment brings serious, decent, well-paid jobs, as you know. And as long as the uncertainty of policy remains, that inhibits investment, and therefore inhibits job creation.”
