Coming from a minister of mineral resources who was picked from obscurity to do the bidding of a powerful patronage network, the latest Mining Charter flatters to deceive and, like the story of post-1994 South Africa, leads only to deeper inequalities.
One of the major objections to the charter is the lack of consultation by minister Mosebenzi Zwane and his department. Where consultations did take place, they were merely tick-box exercises, with little or no real opportunity to influence the content of the charter.
This lack of broad-based input and consultation is a reflection of the deep-seated sense of superiority that has corrupted the very soul of the ANC.
The ANC and its unaccountable deployed apparatchiks have convinced themselves that only they have the answers to our collective problems.
The latest iteration of the Mining Charter exposes the document's intention explicitly to benefit a small elite, most likely those connected to patronage networks.
The narrow focus on the 30% shareholding that must be allocated to entrepreneurs, employee share-ownership schemes, and community shareholding , suggests that merely having black persons as shareholders would somehow transform the sector from one that exploits people to a broad-based economic miracle.
Since 1994, precisely this model has been entrenching the economic divisions of the past. It has produced BEE networks that have continued to make South Africa the most unequal society in the world.
It has also shown us how these same BEE individuals will not hesitate to deploy the full might of the state to crush and kill any who dare ask for a living wage.
What may at first seem to be a broadening of the BEE patronage networks to include community shareholding is soon exposed as yet another vehicle to enrich a few connected patronage clients. Community shareholding, instead of being controlled by the community through collective and democratic processes, will instead be controlled by a Mining Transformation and Development Agency.
As with previous such entities that purport to act in the interests of communities, such as the Bapo Ba Mogale community, which, according to the public protector saw R617-million go unaccounted for, this new agency has all the hallmarks of patronage networks with easy access to extensive public funds.
The MTDA will not be open to public scrutiny and will only be required to report to the minister. What a surprise. The current charter does not change the structure of social labour plans, which are but blunt instruments failing to deliver on developmental obligations to communities.
Instead, they maintain the inefficient system in which municipalities often absorb most of the funds meant for development to maintain lavish lifestyles for councillors, while communities affected by mining sink into poverty.
The need for a new social compact in the mining sector is dire. The post-1994 compact was essentially an elite arrangement between mining and the ANC.
It is now time for the vast majority to be allowed to renegotiate that compact.
A future social compact of the industry must include the following features:
- The increased tax on the sector must benefit more stakeholders;
- Compensation for loss of host community livelihoods must be clearly determined;
- Mining corporations must open their books to society to realise the communal nature of mineral resources and to prevent illicit financial flows;
- Artisanal mining must be assisted to benefit communal community associations;
- and Democratic community control over developmental and productive practices must be created to prevent environmental destruction.
These processes must be opened to public scrutiny and engagement.
The time for tinpot dictators is over.
• Rutledge is natural resources manager for Action Aid South Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
