‘Prime Evil image denting prospects’

MINING entrepreneur Bernard Swanepoel concedes that the fundamental problem for the mining sector is that local politicians and much of the population don’t like the industry.

“There are politicians who wouldn’t mind if the mining industry ceased to exist. Society in South Africa is completely unclear as to whether mining is a worthwhile endeavour. Just look at all the conversations going on in the country. Prime Evil is mining.

“Whether it’s acid mine drainage, the hostel system, the blow-out at Marikana, clearly we’ve got thousands of legacy issues, we can’t deny that. But if we were serious about mining as a contributor we’d be serious about exploration.”

He feels mining has been dismally bad at selling itself to the government and the country. “The mining industry is responsible for its own bad image. Who else can we blame?”

Inexcusably high remuneration for executives is a case in point.

“I think it’s vulgar. I really, honestly think it is vulgar. It is a complete disconnect to claim it is market related and all of that — you can’t have your CEO being paid relative to a Canadian CEO when his workers are not being paid relative to Canadian workers.”

He has no time for the argument that if local mining executives are not paid the market rate they’ll leave.

“Ja, ja. Show me the vacancies? After a few years they leave anyway.

“Executive remuneration is part of our problem. Onehundred-and-ten years of exploitative labour practices is part of our problem. Acid mine drainage is part of our problem.

“But if we’re going to continuously look at the past, at what went wrong, we’ll kill the industry. Because if you want today’s

If we’re going to look at what went wrong, we’ll kill the sector

investors to pay for all the sins of the past, they aren’t going to do that.

“They’re going to run away. And you’re going to have no funding and you’re not going to build the next generation of mines.”

Will these arguments change anything? Probably not.

“The government needs to weigh up competing assets and ultimately popularity and votes,” he says.

“I don’t know how many mining executives would vote for the current government, and how many mineworkers vote for the current government.

“There lies your problem.”—