Mining department’s consultation with communities pays dividends

Bridges built to mend the trust deficit and ensure extraction benefits everyone via transformation and growth

VIEWS OF THE AFFECTED COMMUNITIES TOWARDS FINALISING THE CHARTER ARE CRITICAL … THEY REFLECT THE ASPIRATIONS OF THE PEOPLE

The mineral resources ministry is consulting mining communities, listening to their views on how the mining industry affects them. Thus far the department has interacted with stakeholders in four provinces, with the remaining five to be completed in the coming few weeks.

Initially, some commentators expressed reservations about the process being too complex, even doubting it would happen at all. However, anchoring the ministry’s approach is the political will to engage the communities and the need to bring about regulatory certainty to the sector.

Communities affected by mining embraced this opportunity for active engagement and participation and are making well thought-out, structured and valuable inputs to the Mining Charter. Mining communities engaged to date, in at least four provinces, have expressed overwhelming appreciation for the minister’s responsiveness in including them in what they want to see in the Mining Charter, and frankly express what they would not like to see in it.

This kind of engagement empowers communities with information, offers them a platform to be listened to and gives them direct access to their public representatives.

Mining is an important economic activity. In the context of our country, we should aim to ensure that mining occurs in a transformative and competitive environment. This places the imperative on the sector to grow the economy and to ensure that economic growth accrues to the whole of society as well as for communities directly affected by mining.

The Department of Mineral Resources is initiating bold initiatives to reinvigorate the industry and unlock its real potential. One of the areas that stand to be positively affected by a reinvigorated mining industry is the redress of past inequalities and the transformation of South African society.

The Mining Charter, which is a tool for transformation, is a powerful pact between all stakeholders to contribute towards the achievement of the equal, nonracial and nonsexist society envisioned in our Constitution.

Alongside the transformation pillar is the strategy for competitiveness and growth. Mining’s contribution to GDP fell from 21% in 1970 to 6% in 2011. However, the sector still represents 60% of national exports.

Commodity prices have been weaker of late, and the pressing challenge for the sector is to find new, innovative ways to exploit existing resources while we share the benefit with communities. Recent statistics show that SA is endowed with an abundance of ore reserves amounting to more than $2.5-trillion. According to Statistics SA, the mining sector now accounts for 7.48% of GDP and is ranked fifth internationally in terms of mining contribution to GDP.

Transformation and competitive growth will best serve the country when they happen in an environment where mining communities feel and see the benefits of mining. Our participative democracy, which is at the heart of broad-based socioeconomic transformation, intends to move mining communities from the periphery to join the pact. The recent judgment of the High Court in Pretoria regarding the need to consult affected mining communities about the Mining Charter, which is contemplated in section 100 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, reinforces this view. Quality community consultation and engagement are crucial building blocks for good governance, good business and good management of results for everyone.

Consultation is therefore critical in fostering involvement and engagement where community expectations are considered by regulators.

A concerted national effort of deep partnerships and collaborations in the true spirit of our participatory democracy is under way to bring about a much-needed sunrise to the sector, which is the lifeblood of SA. The size of the industry is R230bn, after contracting in recent years. This contraction must be arrested by all of us. The re-visioning process could breathe life back into the sector.

Some economists estimate that there will be an increase of up to 80% in investment if policy is stabilised. Herein lies the potential to trigger an investment boom.

Business Monitor International, a division of Fitch Group, released a note stating that if efforts to deliver an improved Mining Charter that is supported by all stakeholders are successful, it will revise the country’s low score on the regulatory sub-Saharan mining risk/reward index. SA scores 50 on the index, putting it in third place among 16 African countries. Globally SA is placed 34th, behind Botswana (23) and Ghana.

Community engagements on the Mining Charter reveal huge potential for the sector to deliver a better life for all.

When one truly makes concerted efforts to inform, consult and listen to communities and when communities actively participate, it makes for healthy democracy. Affected mining community stakeholder groups sent their representatives to engage with Team DMR and to make structured inputs into the charter process. Communities took specific issue with the proposed Mining Transformation and Development Agency, which was designed to manage shareholding on their behalf. Instead they suggested perpetual community trusts. The decision to engage is both fulfilling and informative as communities raise a variety of transformation and trust issues. Team DMR is taking heed of their submissions.

In the community consultations to date, salient points have been made by the community participants. Critically, what has come through is that there is a trust deficit between communities and the department, on the one hand, and the mining companies on the other. Communities view the department as ineffective and, at times, as seeming to serve the interests of mining companies instead of their own as owners of the land on which mining occurs. In many instances, communities perceive officials as colluding with companies for their own interest, including corrupt behaviour.

With regard to the mining companies, communities see them as interested only in making profit without regard for their welfare and livelihood. Examples are how some mining companies pollute water and the environment in general; how the industry disrespects the communities’ ancestors’ graves when relocations occur, and how blasting ruins people’s homes.

It is in this context that we need to appreciate the importance and relevance of the mine social labour plans. The plans were born out of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act and are designed to actualise the goals of the Mining Charter and benefit mining-host communities and labour-sending areas, among others. Therefore, the need to manage openly and improve mining-government-community partnership and dialogue in implementing social labour plans is paramount. There need to be adequate consultations with communities by mines in the formulation and implementation of such projects. These must be monitored regularly, and companies need to ensure community access to the mines’ social labour plan documents, to enable community input in how projects are structured and designed to benefit them.

However, it is also about the mining companies co-operating among themselves and pooling social labour plan projects to achieve maximum impact in communities. Linked to this is the view of communities about the failure of the industry to comply and fulfil its commitment, and the failure of the department to enforce regulation. This breeds conflict between communities and other actors. It affects their perception of the Mining Charter as not merely a social pact but an enforceable tool. It is, therefore, important for the industry to appreciate this as we search for a global compact for transformation and competitive growth.

These issues demonstrate that for mining to happen in a way that the country and everyone in it benefits, greater effort should be invested by the Department of Mineral Resources, the mining companies, labour and communities on building and restoring trust. The immediate challenges are, therefore, the need to promote structured, regular engagements between mines, the department and affected communities. In addition, it is important to rehabilitate and restore mined land; address the problems of greed and corruption manifesting in the industry; and ensure transparency and accountability in the awarding of prospecting and mining licences.

The participation and views of the affected communities as we work towards finalising the charter are critical since they reflect the aspirations of the people. Inputs from all community engagements will be fed into the charter task team. Other non-charter inputs — issues that relate to the department or specific mining houses and communities — are being directed to sections of the Department of Mineral Resources to process.

The department has committed itself to exert the much-needed effort to respond to the needs of its clients: employers, trade unions and communities. This presents a new dawn of hope, characterised by trust-building collaboration for the mining sector, with a promise to deliver a better life for all.