The 99-year-old Anglo American, an important former participant in the development of the South African economy, has been reduced from a company which had hundreds upon hundreds of assets in the past to one that will have only 16 of them in the future.
Its listing in London in 1999 marked the beginning of a steep downsizing process of unprecedented global proportions, which has seen the company jettison two-thirds of its commodities and decimate its employee base.
Had it kept its primary listing in Johannesburg, there would have been none of the unsettling calls for its disinvestment from this country that kept shattering investor confidence.
It would also have had top executive firepower on hand at 44 Main street to cement proper relations with all stakeholders, including the South African government, labour and near-mine communities.
Instead, it became excessively influenced by fickle demands that pushed it into taking decisions without the required due diligence.
The South African government was far too generous when it agreed to Anglo’s corporate head office moving from Johannesburg to London and should rather have adopted the approach of the Australian government, which insisted on BHP Billiton retaining at least equal corporate footing in Melbourne.
Some, on coming to Johannesburg and finding no large mining champion with a primary listing on the JSE against the background of this country’s long mining history, have expressed astonishment.
One of those was, ironically, the incumbent Anglo American CEO, Mark Cutifani, whose early intentions were to turn AngloGold Ashanti into a diversified mining major that would attract strong investor attention to the JSE and be a magnet for top mining talent.
Instead, talent nurtured and funded in South Africa has been lured away to Australia, Canada and South America.
Now, a new mining champion is needed to help the country claw its way back on a continent that offers huge opportunity.
South Africa’s mining industry needs to adopt a new outward- looking and broad-based approach in its comeback, which should be in tandem with the Southern African continent as a start.
In fact, Southern Africans need to work together to ensure that, this time round, there is holistic leverage off the trillions of dollars worth of metals and minerals still in the ground.
Resources need to be the springboard to economic diversity that rids the continent of the resources curse by removing the narrowness that mining spawns when being too dominant.
New investment thinking that will help to smooth out mining’s boom-and-bust is fortunately coinciding with the emergence of a new breed of Southern African politicians, who are well aware of the need for leverage off mining of the kind that created economic diversity right here in the golden city of Johannesburg in its early days.
Mining must be allowed to beget infrastructure, including in this day and age of information technology infrastructure, so that it can play a role in fostering everything from agriculture to industry, commerce, banking, tourism and all other modern business pursuits that allow for all economic boats to be floated freely and fairly.