DMR media statement ‘aggressive’, says Chamber
A MEDIA statement issued by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) was “aggressive” and made judgments that were properly the province of the High Court, the Chamber of Mines said.
The department issued a statement on Monday to announce the late filing of its answering affidavit in response to the Chamber’s urgent application to interdict the implementation of the Reviewed Mining Charter.
The Chamber filed the application to have the charter reviewed and set aside after it was gazetted in June. The Charter sets new black-ownership targets for the mining industry.
In his answering affidavit, Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane accused the Chamber of trying to prevent black people from participating meaningfully in the mining industry.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Chamber said it was not opposed to transformation. “The Chamber’s only proviso is that real transformation must be implemented with due regard to what is achievable, bearing in mind the realities of the situation the industry faces,” the Chamber said.
“The transformation advocated by the DMR in its Reviewed Charter is designed to benefit the interests of a select few, while killing any appetite for investment and leading to further job losses.”
The Chamber said the Reviewed Charter was designed to extract billions of rands in revenues annually from mining-right holders and channel them into an agency controlled solely by the Minister of Mineral Resources.”
It said the agency had “no governance in place”, and the “irresistible conclusion” was that its purpose was not to benefit transformation. “There is no transparency or, indeed, any indication as to who will ever have the opportunity to access these funds, and how the funds will be applied in a publicly accountable manner.”
The Chamber said Zwane’s claim that the DMR and the Chamber had met on 17 occasions between April 2016 and March 2017 was misleading.
“The DMR disingenuously confuses the meetings held to resolve the declaratory order court process to resolve the issue of the consequences of previous black economic empowerment transactions, which were started long before the first draft of the Reviewed Charter was published by the DMR, with actual discussion about the Reviewed Mining Charter.
“According to the Chamber’s records and detailed notes from each meeting, only two meetings in 2016 were related to non-ownership aspects of the Reviewed Mining Charter. In each of these meetings, the DMR only listened to the Chamber’s inputs, without providing input or taking these into account. During 2017, the Chamber met with the DMR on six occasions where some non-ownership elements were discussed, but the primary focus was on the declaratory order court application,” the Chamber said. – ANA