Tim Cohen
20 October 2008
column
Johannesburg — WHAT can you say, other than just throw up your hands in despair, about the mineral and energy department's decision to start a state-owned mining company and then exempt it from its own legislation.
According to the Government Gazette, the company, the African Exploration Mining & Finance Corporation, is allowed to prospect, mine or bulk sample for any minerals, without applying for any right, permit or permission, if it does so for the purposes of security of supply. The department started by nationalising mineral rights, which has had the effect of turning the industry into its compliant plaything.
It managed the conversion process so badly that it engineered a situation where SA could take only marginal advantage of one of history's greatest commodity booms.
The department managed to make the industry such a red-tape nightmare that most of the few major foreign companies that invested have now left. But most critically, it has presided over the halving of employment on the mines.
It is our Chavez element; full of boastfulness and poor performance.
Now, it intends to go into competition with the industry it has wounded so badly.
And even then, it does not want to comply with the rules it established itself.
This all contradicts good governance, common sense, a massive list of failed state mining companies in Africa and possibly also the law.
It's all just nuts.
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