South Africa’s Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu will again deliver the official welcome at this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba.

Delivering the welcoming address at Mining Indaba 2012, Shabangu, who was appointed in 2009, said that health, safety and the environmental impact of mining were central issues that needed to be dealt with in the new mining year.

“The goal of ensuring that mining takes place in a responsible manner cannot be met while the environmental impact resulting from mining activities is not properly regulated and managed. We also recognise that there could be challenges facing potential investors in respect of acquiring the necessary approvals.

“Health and safety in the mining industry is central. As government, we will continue to use the Mine Health and Safety Act and the relevant legislation to take appropriate action to ensure that workers have a safe and dignified work environment, that their right to sanctity of life is protected and that they are able to return daily to their loved ones,” she said.
Shabangu stated the Department of Mineral Resources had worked hard to improve the monitoring and evaluation of compliance with mining legislation.

“It is in our interest to contribute to realising the Africa Mining Vision, which strives, among other things, to develop a knowledge-driven African mining sector and market, diversify the industry through beneficiation, build value chain linkages and tackle the socioeconomic needs of the continent.

“This gathering has the potential to trigger a quantum leap forward in respect of developing the African minerals and mining industry. Working together, we can indeed do more and the Mining Indaba is the right address for us to do just that,” she said.

Meanwhile, at the Council for Geoscience’s centennial celebration and conference in November last year, Shabangu spoke on the future of the South African mining industry.

“As we all know, South Africa has a well-developed mining sector, with world class mining companies operating in the country and well-organised industry structures.

“However, the future of the mining industry will depend on increased and continuous investment in research and technology development, mining innovations, cost efficiency, strategy research and development, pro- ductivity and management,” she added.

Shabangu noted that mining research and technology was fragmented, therefore, stifling the potential for the country to be “on the cutting edge of future mining development”.

Speaking at the annual general meeting of the Chamber of Mines in November last year, Shabangu said that stakeholders would have to collectively tackle the challenges that continue to confront them.

“This industry was a trailblazer for transformation in the country with the sector’s regulatory reform and the introduction of a sector charter at the dawn of the millennium.

“The South African mining industry has changed significantly since the early 1990s, when a handful of corporations dominated mining activities in the country,” she said.

She said she could not emphasise enough the need for sector stakeholders to work towards production efficiency and com- petitiveness of the sector.

“We can only achieve this objective if our mineworkers are proud shareholders of the very means of production they work tirelessly to exploit and their working and living conditions resonate with the production pressures we expect of them. We would also achieve this if our host and major labour-sending areas are visible beneficiaries of the industry.

“At the same time, we have to act in concert with the notion of allowing the industry to become an anchor for the industrialisation of the economy and a stimulus for associated industries, such as specialised services, consumables and capital goods,” Shabangu explained.

She noted that the mining industry should use its creativity to leverage procurement strength to support local manufacturing, which would complement and accelerate the socioeconomic development priorities needed to tackle poverty, unemployment and inequality.

“Notwithstanding tremendous progress made by the industry on health and safety matters in the last few years, I remain gravely concerned about the performance of some sectors, especially the platinum sector.

“It is clear that we have to do much more to [reduce] both fatalities and occupational diseases in the industry through our intensified programmes. The depart- ment is also reviewing the Mine Health and Safety Act to create an enabling regulatory environment to speed up our efforts to continuously and massively improve our collective performance on health and safety in mining,” she said, encouraging stakeholders to work towards a zero harm policy in mining.

Shabangu added that, in order to respond adequately, the industry should focus on several areas and enhance its readiness to contribute towards the additional creation of decent employment in the procurement of goods and services from local sources that manufacture in South Africa.

These include the aggregation of social development requirements to meaningfully increase the footprint and impact of the industry towards development requirements; the use of South Africa-based facilities for the analysis of all samples across the commodity value chain from exploration to mining and metallurgy to value addition; the execution of concurrent mining rehabilitation, where possible, to bring forward postmining rehabilitation responsibilities and ensure sustainable land use; and support for mineral beneficiation, as contained in the strategy that was adopted as policy in 2011.

“There are many challenges that still face the mining industry today, which require everlasting cooperation and collaboration among stakeholders. It is a long-held view of my department that we need to work closer with our stakeholders and create a thriving climate for the mining industry,” she said.

Shabangu is, once again, expected to touch on the global challenges facing mining and the social impact of mining practices, as she did at the inaugural Mining Lekgotla in June last year.

“With an eye on evolving global trends, as government, we are aware of the need for environmental sustainability and attending to global warming challenges.

“We need to continuously work together to manage these challenges. We also need to rectify the relationship between mining, social and community issues in areas where mining operations take place. The aim should be to create a win-win situation for stakeholders,” she said.
Shabangu said South Africa owed it to future generations to operate a mining jurisdiction that is run through its own indigenous effort.

“No one else should do it for us, as we showed when we created a new political order 18 years ago,” Shabangu stated.