Johannesburg and Los Angeles have something special in common. They were both catalysed by gold mining. The Witwatersrand gold rush of 1886 led to the establishment of Johannesburg and the California gold rush of 1848 led to the development of Los Angeles.
Both cities are examples of the sustainability that mining can bring and allowed economic growth to burst out in a multiplicity of directions.
But these days in South Africa, the vested interests of a few stop development. An example is South Africa’s wonderful opportunity to mine hard coking coal in Limpopo. Currently, South African steelmakers have to import hard coking coal because there is none produced locally. A company set out several years back to produce locally but has still not been able to do so because of the resistance of the owners of two key properties.
The granting of a mining licence should ensure that land can be accessed to carry out what in this case will be some drilling just to positively delineate a hard coking coal deposit that was confirmed by former State-owned steelmaker Iscor many decades ago.
But, despite having a mining licence in hand, the mining company ready to invest, mine, substitute imports and export hard coking coal, which is trading at $195/t, is stopped in its tracks.
There are other instances, too, of small groups of people stopping mining that can create wealth for all South Africans.
These selfish South Africans should be shown the report of Australia’s Resources 2030 Taskforce, which praises mining’s ability to raise living standards.
Mining Weekly last week carried the report about the resources sector accounting for more than half of the exports of Australia and the share of indigenous employment in resources being higher than in any other industry.
President Cyril Ramaphosa made a wonderfully insightful comment in the fantastic economic stimulus and recovery plan speech he made last month: “It is imperative that South Africa restores investment and exploration levels in the mining sector as mining and mineral beneficiation activities have significant potential to drive long-term growth, exports and job growth.”
Meanwhile, our gold mining industry is having to fight off the risk of becoming irrelevant to the investment community. Mining development is being stopped by the whim of a few resisting parties who refuse to acknowledge the mining licence regime and countries like Peru and Botswana continue to steal a march on us as we continue to be less competitive than others.
South Africans with mining expertise are helping other countries create enormous wealth and not their own because we continue to be less competitive, the latest charter gazetting notwithstanding.
We have a National Development Plan that calls for mining development, but every step of the way continues to be needlessly difficult and offputting.