Mining in focus
Indaba 2019:
The Cyril and Gwede show
This year, Cape Town hosted the Investing in African Mining Indaba for the 25th time.
Despite government’s
optimism, the South
African mining industry
still faces an uphill
battle, writes Leon Louw.
I
n 1966, British Prime Minister Harold
Wilson said that a week is a long time
in politics — imagine what an entire
year feels like for a politician in South
Africa today.
It is hard to believe that the keynote
address on the first day of the 2018
[24] MINING MIRROR APRIL 2019
Investing in African Mining Indaba in
Cape Town, South Africa, was delivered
by one Mosebenzi Joseph Zwane, the then
South African minister of mineral resources.
Zwane was a show-stopper on that hot
February morning last year. His speech took
place a little more than six months after
he unleashed the disastrous first draft of
Mining Charter III, while the even more
damaging Mineral and Petroleum Resources
Development Act (MPRDA) was lying on
President Jacob Zuma’s cluttered desk at
Tuynhuys, almost ready to be signed. The
South African mining fraternity was baying
for Zwane’s blood. Zwane and Zuma were
by then well and truly exposed as facilitators
of the great state capture project, and the
Mining Charter and MPRDA were making
executives hot under the collar. Unbeknown
to them, Zuma would be forced to resign
only a week or so later. Zwane’s inaudible
utterances on the main stage at Indaba
did little to appease investors and he left
huffing and puffing after failing to find his
voice, surrounded by bodyguards befitting a
medieval king.
Fast-forward a year later. Zwane is
forgotten, Zuma’s pilfering is laid bare before
Judge Zondo, and the MPRDA has been
swept from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s
new, squeaky clean desk. Swaggering Gwede
Mantashe shares the stage as minister
of mineral resources with the mining
brotherhood, of which he, and of course
Ramaphosa (who coincidently also made
a surprise appearance at Indaba 2019), are
indelible members, unlike their predecessors.
This, naturally, set the scene for an upbeat
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