South Africa could achieve 5% of global exploration spend if government were to “cut the red tape” that is hurting the mining and exploration industry more than it is helping it, diversified metals explorer Orion Minerals CEO Errol Smart told delegates at the Junior Indaba this week.

“The bureaucracy that's been killing us for the last 20 years and squeezing the life out of our industry has to be consigned to the museum and to the archives,” he said, emphasising that this change had to happen now, not later, as the situation had become so dire that there was no more time for debate.

Smart was attempting to debunk the assertion that South Africa would never achieve 5% of global exploration spend. He stated that South Africa was home to a wealth of metals and minerals that could fuel the energy transition, thereby bolstering the local economy and creating thousands of jobs.

However, he expressed frustration with the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy for making the administrative processes behind securing and acting on mining rights harder than it needed to be, thereby hamstringing the industry and scaring away investment.

Smart said that, if the DMRE “cut the red tape” and provided a cadastre, the South African mining and exploration industry could take advantage of the energy transition to bring money into the country.

“Everybody blames miners for the state of the environment, but the only way out of the corner that we're in is by mining critical minerals. Without critical minerals, we don't have renewable energy, we don't have just transitions and we don't have a future,” Smart said.

He said the implementation of a working cadastre was a critical and urgent part of achieving greater exploration spend.

“[With a cadastre in place], we can all measure each other. We can measure the DMRE and they can measure us and it will be transparent, simple and efficient. Then we can operate and there will be a flood of money into this country,” Smart concluded.