Gigaba faces conundrum over Mining Charter clash
The overtures of Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba and ANC treasurergeneral Zweli Mkhize’s to the Chamber of Mines to resolve the crippling impasse between the industry and controversial Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane have come to very little.
With the ANC’s leadership focused on the elective conference and the struggle for control of the governing party, the discussions with the ANC have been fleeting and of not much depth or resolution.
The talks with Gigaba were similar, but he may take a proposal about the temporarily suspended third iteration of the charter to a Cabinet meeting.
Any proposal for a moratorium of the charter by Gigaba, if that is indeed what he has in mind, would be a slap in the face for Zwane who has defended the document he gazetted in June as a fine example of his department’s commitment to “radical economic transformation”.
It could also highlight the divisions in the ANC.
It could be argued that both the ANC and the chamber are in a holding pattern regarding the dispute about the third charter, which knocked R51bn off the value of JSE-listed mining stocks in a single day.
Zwane agreed to suspend the charter in the face of fierce legal resistance from the chamber and subsequently, a number of communities, pending the outcome of the court case.
Whichever way the judgment goes in February, there will be an appeal.
The lull in talks could well be underlain by hope in the industry that if Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa wins the ANC leadership battle,
deposing President Jacob Zuma and his faction, a more pragmatic stance could be adopted in the party towards the mining sector, and that Zwane, a divisive figure at best,
would be removed from his post. By extension, a new mines minister might just scrap the third charter and restart talks with the industry to formulate a less damaging document to plot
the transformation of the sector as the first two charters have done since 2004.
Besides, even if there were to be further engagement between now and early 2018,
the chamber’s key strategist and negotiator, CEO Roger Baxter, has been incapacitated by surgery for at least a month. There can therefore be no substantive talks between the chamber and any other party in this time.
What is clear is that the offers by Gigaba and Mkhize to act as facilitators or brokers of talks between the chamber and Zwane are just as likely to prove fruitless.
Both Baxter and chamber president Mxolisi Mgojo have publicly declared that Zwane is not a man they will talk to, given the unresolved allegations of corruption that have marked his tenure as minister and as the Free State MEC of agriculture and his dealings with the Gupta family.
They have both reiterated the chamber’s resolute commitment to resolving the impasse about the charter in court, given what they say is Zwane’s poor track record — negotiating the third charter in bad faith, ignoring the chamber’s inputs, and lack of meaningful consultation.
Almost a lone voice in the industry is Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani, who at a year-end media event made the argument for the impasse to be resolved through negotiations rather than relying on the courts to do so.
Other CEOs have adopted a much less nuanced stance than Cutifani, pushing for the matter to be fought in court to protect their shareholders’ interests in what has become an increasingly uncertain and onerous regulatory environment.