Cape Town - Mining stakeholders from across the continent are gathered in Cape Town this week for the Investing in African Mining Indaba, which kicked off yesterday with an opening address by Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe that delved into the reality of challenges in the sector.
While this took place, members of mining-affected communities in South Africa as well as activists from eSwatini, the Right to Say No Campaign and the People’s Dialogue picketed outside Parliament against the mining indaba for its “anti-poor” agenda and its “promotion of destructive mining”.
Right to Say No Campaign national organiser Matthews Hlabane said: “The purpose of the indaba is to serve as a platform for these transnational mining corporations to promote extractivism and to discuss how they will continue to thrive and profit in the mining sector while millions of people suffer the severe social, (ecological) and economic consequences of destructive mining and extractivism at large.”
Addressing the indaba participants, Mantashe said that South Africa experienced more power supply disruptions in 2022 that led to a decline in mineral production across all commodities. In November, mining production contracted by 0.9%, marking a 10th consecutive month of contraction in volumes produce.
“It is estimated that load shedding cost the economy about R1 billion a day. Failure to attend to and address the declining Eskom plant performance and subsequent higher stages of load shedding is an irritation to society and has the potential of pitting society against government,” Mantashe said.
Despite this challenge, however, Mantashe said that Gold Fields mining company increased production by 10%, in part because of the reforms on embedded generation which they took advantage of following the amendments to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act (ERA), wherein the licensing requirement for generation projects for own use was increased from 1 megawatt to 100MW and ultimately removed altogether.
“This cushioned them from the impact of load shedding as they were able to generate their own energy, and thus increased and maintained production,” Mantashe said.
Law firms Webber Wentzel and Herbert Smith Freehills both agreed that Mantashe’s address acknowledged current issues facing the mining industry relating to health, safety and some load-shedding impacts, but did not address critical issues or new targets.
The Webber Wentzel team said: “The minister failed to indicate how the South African government intends to tackle the country’s power shortage in the long term. Although he commented on the deregulation of embedded generation, including lifting the cap, he did not address the ongoing difficulties that mining companies are facing in obtaining other permits and accessing transmission infrastructure.”
kristin.engel@inl.co.za