The government needs to introduce measures to promote the beneficiation of the country’s minerals, said mineral and petroleum resources minister Gwede Mantashe in the National Assembly on Friday.
SA should not be exporting raw materials, which were beneficiated elsewhere, the minister said during the debate on President Cyril Ramaphosa's opening of parliament address on Thursday evening.
Ramaphosa focused on three strategic priorities of the Government of National Unity (GNU) — inclusive economic growth and job creation; poverty and the cost of living; and a capable, ethical and developmental state.
Mantashe said SA needed an incentive scheme for beneficiation which could include granting tax holidays for beneficiaters for a limited period of time, taxing exports to discourage the export of raw commodities or the introduction of a commodity-price-linked electricity tariff. “We can look into those alternatives.”
He stressed that for beneficiation to take place, reliable, efficient and affordable electricity supply was needed. Focus had to be given to the primary sectors of the economy that would lay the foundation for the secondary and tertiary sectors.
Mantashe hit out once again at “foreign funded NGOs” that were blocking the exploration of gas and oil by going to court, stressing that while SA needed to develop its oil and gas resources in a responsible way, development should not be blocked. The legal opposition by NGOs to projects was chasing away developers.
“We must accept unreservedly the need for responsible mining and petroleum exploration that preserves the environment while accelerating development,” Mantashe said.
While welcoming the efforts to reform the visa regime to attract skills and investment, Mantashe said that in the midst of an unemployment crisis, the government had to deal with the issue of cheap foreign labour. Jobs were being taken by foreign nationals, he said.
“It is the bottom end of the labour market that needs our attention. That is where the employment crisis is. It is quite important that we confront the issue of cheap labour being an attractive alternative to employment creation.”
It was not xenophobic, he added, to say that SA needed to protect sectors that did not need complicated skills such as the hospitality, construction and agriculture sectors, where it was easy to employ people at substandard wage rates.
In written notes on Ramaphosa’s speech Mantashe said these sectors needed to preserve them for local labour instead of employing workers from neighbouring countries,
He said it was unacceptable that restaurants he visited did not employ South Africans.
In the written notes, Mantashe also gave his support to a sovereign wealth fund, possibly funded by, among others, mining royalties, which generated an average of about R28bn per year.
During the debate, opposition parties criticised the speech, with EFF leader Julius Malema describing it as “tired” and a repetition of previous state of the nation addresses. None of the commitments made previously had been met, he said.
“All the things you said yesterday are meaningless because they are exactly what you said in the six state of the nation addresses since you became president in 2018. None of the commitments made in these state of the nation addresses have been met,” Malema said, addressing Ramaphosa.
He attacked Ramaphosa personally as being a collaborator of white monopoly capital as evidenced by the coalition of the ANC with the DA.
Action SA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip said Ramaphosa had indulged in “flights of fantasy” that no-one believed in anymore. People had lost trust in what Ramaphosa said. “We have heard your ‘we will do’ speeches so often but we have never heard you say a ‘we have done’ speech in parliament before.”
Both Malema and MK party chief whip John Hlophe called for an amendment to section 25 of the constitution to allow for expropriation without compensation. Hlophe said what was needed was an agrarian revolution with land being restored to the people. “We will continue with the fight until we get our land back,” he said.
He also proposed a system of compulsory military service to absorb unemployed youth and a return to African customary law to replace the current Roman Dutch law practised in SA.
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