It’s not often a journalist wants to be wrong and completely misreading the pulse, but this is one of those instances.
A two-day junior mining conference chaired by mining veteran Bernard Swanepoel starts next Tuesday. To date, these conferences have largely entailed small mining and exploration companies talking among themselves, with nothing new outside the pleas to the department of mineral resources and energy for a more suitable regulatory regime, to make it easier to do business, and commiserating with each other about a tough domestic operating environment.
The department has sent delegates, sometimes even minister Gwede Mantashe, to speak at these events, but, to be blunt, they’ve offered little to no succour for participants — a true example of hope triumphing over experience, year after year.
This is not a question of singling out the junior conference. Swanepoel alone has three or four mining conferences a year. There’s the big resources conference in Cape Town every February. They all have a single underpinning similarity.
It’s difficult to not be cynical after attending all these conferences for so many years and see them as pure talk shops and, even more cynically, as money-making events where nothing is resolved, and the discussions are circular in nature as everybody talks or moans annually about what everyone already knows.
Uniquely, Swanepoel has direct input with speakers, actively stirring up serious debate and emotions as much as he can, but — again — it’s all talk. Putting Mantashe or his officials on the spot as he has done with tough, irreverent and provocative questions hasn’t yet resulted in a sudden public change of heart or attitude.
So far, all the departmental officials have done is plod along their tired ideological and well-worn regulatory paths, offering platitudes and occasional soothing words, which give mining companies and investors, both existing and potential, almost nothing to hang onto in the hope things will improve.
After years of watching this spectacle of the industry talking to itself and bemoaning the same old things, are expectations high that 2021 will be any different for junior miners? The answer, born from years of experience and disillusion, is no.
The reason it’s important to expect change and tangible progress from the department for the junior and exploration segment is because a lightbulb moment has recently happened in the department and with Mantashe, that this critical segment is largely moribund and needs urgent revitalisation.
Last October, director-general Thabo Mokoena told Swanepoel’s Joburg Indaba mining conference a comprehensive exploration strategy would be unveiled by the department within three months.
It’s now the end of May and there’s been silence.
Mantashe wants to grow exploration expenditure in SA to 3% of the $10bn global spend from 1% in recent years. He is keen to grow the junior sector, with more of SA’s resources found and brought into development by more companies.
That’s a wonderful, admirable objective. The reality is going to be a little more difficult when it comes to implementing it.
At the risk of sounding like the industry talking to itself, the department’s digital mining and prospecting rights platform is a failure. Mantashe and Mokoena said earlier in 2021 they were conducting a six-month assessment of the online system. Mantashe was brave enough to say the system was a mess, but does he have the courage to discard it entirely and go for an off-the-shelf, simple, intuitive system that is widely used in the rest of Africa?
Probably not.
What about actually writing a policy putting empowerment requirements for exploration companies in black and white, stipulating that empowerment obligations don’t apply at this level rather than just relying on Mantashe’s say-so?
As much as Mantashe repeatedly says this, anecdotal feedback from the industry is that his regional office officials disagree with him and insist exploration companies have empowerment partners for the riskiest part of mining.
Why not make exploration and small-scale mining as easy as possible, without binding it to the same onerous requirements that govern large mining companies with their army of well-paid lawyers and advisers?
No small company can afford to navigate the myriad legal and regulatory minefields inherent in the sector to explore and start mining. This is not a call for a free-for-all that will destroy the environment and shield small operators from legal consequences. It is a call for pragmatism.
SA needs to provide exploration data freely and easily to all interested parties to kick-start the search for economically feasible deposits for companies of all sizes.
If there was ever a time for the department to unveil its exploration and junior mining strategy it would be either on the Monday ahead of the two-day junior mining conference or at the event itself. But it must be an industry-friendly strategy and not one laden with ideology.
Is that likely?
After years of hoping for the best from the department, I’m sorry to say that don’t think so. But I’d be thrilled to be proved wrong. I really do hope so.
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