The decline of South Africa’s mining industry must be vigorously arrested by giving the flagging sector a new ticket to ride. Bureaucratic hoops must be reduced to a minimum and critical minerals must be highlighted. At the same time, the way must be fully opened up for optimum public-private collaboration to boost energy transmission, uplift logistics to globally competitive levels and to crush crime and corruption with massive, robust and unrelenting force.
Mining is an industry of enormous potential, not only as a creator of direct jobs but crucially as a creator of multiplicity of indirect ones. The industry’s upcycle will return when it can once again generate huge taxes for the benefit of society. In the meantime, every effort must immediately be made to highlight the contribution that so many of this country’s amazing metals and minerals can give to the world, not the least being the contribution to global society that South Africa’s remarkable platinum group metals (PGMs) can make at a time of desperate worldwide need for the genuine decarbonisation that only PGMs, yes, only PGMs, can really achieve.