Charlotte Mathews
10 October 2008
Johannesburg — THE government will revive a state-owned company dormant since 1944 to invest in strategic minerals, such as coal, uranium and vanadium, minerals and energy department deputy director-general Jacinto Rocha said this week.
In reply to a question at a debate on the future of the mining industry at the Gordon Institute for Business Science Forum, he said recent rumours about the state setting up a mining company were not rumours. But the government's plans were nothing new or secret, he said.
The African National Congress resolved at its Polokwane conference last December to form a state-owned mining company. In August, elements in the South African Communist Party expressed support for partial nationalisation of the industry on the grounds that its benefits were not being widely shared.
"We are not nationalising mining," Rocha said . Still, he pointed out that the UK public had appeared to welcome the nationalisation of several UK banks in the latest financial crisis.
The debate was not about state or private sector involvement, but about the quality of management.
The government was already involved as a shareholder in mining through Alexkor and PetroSA, he said, and cited examples of the involvement of the Botswana and Namibian governments in diamond companies Debswana and Namdeb with De Beers.
"The state brings money," he said , and there were no plans to take rights away.
"As the state, we will not destroy value, we will add value."
Asked for more information on the company, Rocha said yesterday it was in the process of being capitalised but could not give further details .
The government would make an announcement on its capital and the licences it held "in due course".
Replying to another question, he said the debate within government circles on local beneficiation of SA's natural resources was continuing. The minerals and energy department and trade and industry department were developing a strategy on benefication, and more people in industry were accepting the need for it.
He said it was untrue, as had been suggested in the past, that the government wanted mining companies to beneficiate. In fact, it wanted mining companies to be the facilitators of benefication.
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