Andre Janse van Vuuren
SOUTH Africa would ask a court to rule on whether mining firms could say they had met black-ownership rules even after shareholders had sold their stake in assets amid a dispute over how to interpret the laws, Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said yesterday.
South Africa, with the world’s biggest reserves of platinum, chrome ore and manganese, had enacted a mining charter in 2004, compelling operators to sell 26 percent of their local assets to black people by the end of last year.
Some investors that acquired the empowerment stakes at discounts subsequently sold them, diluting the companies’ black shareholding. We “do this collaboratively, there is no conflict, we are not at war with each other”, Ramatlhodi said. “The view of the department is that the charter is clear – the essence of transformation is that black ownership should not be compromised.”
The Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), would bring an urgent, unopposed application to court and wanted finality on the issue by the end of April, Ramatlhodi said.
Last July, Ramatlhodi said he did not accept the “once-empowered, always-empowered” argument put forward by the mining companies.
Rejected
While a government-commissioned study from mid-2008 found just 9 percent of the industry was black-owned, its findings were rejected by the Chamber of Mines.
Excluding previous black economic empowerment (BEE) transactions would result in a “material misrepresentation” of all the meaningful economic participation facilitated by mining companies, the chamber said yesterday.
“The DMR, in issuing mining rights, had agreed with the transformation plans of the companies,” it said. “The fact that various BEE companies had sold their assets in mining, should not be used to penalise” efforts to comply, it said.
The industry had reached ownership targets set out in the charter and had provided “meaningful economic participation” for historically disadvantaged South Africans, the chamber said.
More than 60 percent of licence holders were providing single or family units to workers, while 37 percent were spending 5 percent or more of their annual payroll on training, Ramatlhodi said. Half of all mines met the requirement to appoint 50 percent black senior managers, he said.
Mining companies risked losing their licences for non-compliance, Ramatlhodi said. – Bloomberg