Two decades of policy that failed to support exploration have caused SA to miss out on a generation of new mines, said Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad.
Addressing the Joburg Mining Indaba on Wednesday, Wanblad assured the crowd that the mining behemoth still sees SA as important to its strategy despite having sold off most of its local assets in recent years.
However, when asked why Anglo’s local exploration spending had dwindled over the past few decades, he said that 20 years of exploration-unfriendly policy had hindered the country’s ability to attract investment into new mines.
“SA is underexplored today because it has had a very unsupportive policy for exploration for the past 20-odd years. That’s a very important part of a mining life cycle,” said Wanblad.
“It takes about 17 years to go from finding a deposit to getting to full production. That’s a generation of mines that have been forgone.”
Global restructuring
The comments come less than a month after Anglo announced a merger with Canadian firm Teck, in a deal which will take the group’s headquarters from London to Vancouver, with corporate offices in both SA and Canada.
We know what the challenges are in SA, and there’s a strong coalition of the willing working very hard to overcome those challenges.
In the lead-up to the merger, Anglo sold its remaining 19.9% stake in platinum group metal (PGM) unit Valterra, marking a final departure from the SA unit. The group’s only remaining assets in SA are iron ore giant Kumba and diamond business De Beers, for which it is actively seeking potential buyers.
“We can be transformative in growing the country and building new mines, but we are behind the curve because it takes very strong leadership and supportive policy to do that,” said Wanblad.
“Not only does it take [17 years] for the mine [to reach production], but it also takes another five or six years to ramp it up before it pays anything back.
“During that time, you need a relatively stable political environment and good, transparent fiscal policies. I think that’s part of the challenge that we have got to face.”
Exploration spending
SA’s exploration expenditure, which plunged from a peak of R6.2bn in 2006 to just R781m last year, has taken centre stage in the country’s mineral policy debate.
The Minerals Council SA, which represents the interests of the country’s biggest mining houses, has highlighted SA’s failure to boost exploration spending as a critical concern for policymakers, particularly as the global demand for critical minerals is rising, imposing opportunity costs on the local sector.
“We know what the challenges are in SA, and there’s a strong coalition of the willing working very hard to overcome those challenges,” said Wanblad.
“Nothing is telling me that these things are going to be overcome tomorrow, but nothing’s telling me that they can’t be overcome. That includes things like infrastructure, rail, logistics and electricity.”
Meanwhile, the Public Investment Corporation said it has ringfenced R1.35bn to back early-stage mining projects to bankable feasibility, prioritising SA with the rest of the continent's diversification into critical energy transition minerals. The fund has set the investment size at between R100m and R400m, subject to internal approvals.
"This strategic allocation enables the PIC to support the growth of South Africa’s mining sector through indirect investments, primarily by deploying capital through private equity, venture capital and specialist mining funds; and joint ventures and partnerships," the PIC said in statement
Regulatory overhaul sparks concern
Much of the industry backlash elicited by the recently gazetted draft Mineral Resources Development Bill of 2025 — which potentially represents the mining sector’s biggest regulatory overhaul since 2002 — centred around the bill’s failure to make the procedure for prospecting and exploration simpler and more transparent.
A key piece of the puzzle is making the management of mineral rights more efficient and transparent while clearing the backlog of mining and prospecting licences — an issue which the department of mineral & petroleum resources hopes to address through its long-awaited mining cadastre system.
The online mining licence system was purportedly set to come online in June, opening the door for more investment in exploration in the country, but it has since been delayed.
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