The State mining company is exempt from the “applica- tion” criteria of South Africa’s minerals legislation only, and not from the legislation’s key “granting” criteria, says Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) deputy director-general Jacinto Rocha.

Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica has, in a Govern-ment Gazette notice, exempted the State-owned African Exploration Mining & Finance Corporation (AEMFC) – the vehicle for the development of the State mining company – from provisions dealing with applications for prospecting rights, mining rights and mining permits.

These provisions, South Africa’s Chamber of Mines (CoM) says in a media release, require applicants to submit environmental management programmes (EMPs), and to consult with interested and affected parties.

Rocha tells Mining Weekly that AEMFC will have to develop an EMP to fulfil the “granting” criteria, and will be required to consult with local communities in the process of developing that EMP.

Rocha adds that AEMFC will also have to comply with mine health and safety legislation, as well as with social and labour plans and black economic- empowerment requirements in the event of mining rights being granted.

AEMFC, he confirms, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the State-owned Central Energy Fund (CEF) and thus an organ of State.

AEMFC is headed by CE Sizwe Madondo, who, Rocha reports, is assisting in “seeing whether the creation of a State mining company from AEMFC is viable or not”.

The CEF’s website reports that the State company received Ministerial approval to operate in April and that it has rights to prospect in Witbank, Wakkerstroom and Bethal. Rocha comments that these rights are “historical”.

Madondo himself was unavailable for comment when Mining Weekly called and available CEF personnel said they were not in a position to comment.

The CEF’s website quotes Madondo further as saying that AEMFC received its first prospecting rights in December last year and that it is applying for a mining licence for the first quarter of next year.

It adds that AEMFC is in discussion with other mining companies to form joint ventures and says that discussions are “almost complete” to have uranium rights in the Northern Cape transferred to it from another State-owned entity.

AEMFC’s strategy, the website adds, is to be able to grow by acquisition.

The CoM says in its media release that AEMFC should be subject to the same requirements as the private sector and that the gazette notice on AEMFC appears to “negate the principle of equality before the law”.

The view of Webber Wentzel natural resources and regulatory practice group head Peter Leon is that the Minister may have acted unlawfully by exempting AEMFC from “key” licensing provisions of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA).

Rocha disagrees with the term “key”, however, and says the use of the word “key” would be appropriate only if AEMFC had been exempted from the MPRDA’s more onerous “granting” criteria.

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