Johannesburg — LEGAL arguments are often convincing, and if they are not, then the lawyers are probably not doing their jobs properly. But reading Kumba 's arguments against the Department of Mineral Resources' decision to grant prospecting rights over the Sishen mine to Imperial Crown Trading (ICT), you have to say their case looks incredibly strong.

This is of course before we have seen the counter-arguments from Imperial which, I understand, is aiming to place in dispute the integrity of the documents in question, which would tend to invalidate Kumba's claim that Imperial copied a bunch of Kumba's documents and then handed them in with its submission.

Journalists have been engaged in a rather odd dance with Kumba over the past few weeks. Several requests for the legal submissions from Kumba were turned down. The documents are available at the court if you can track them down, which is no easy task. Kumba at first refused to hand them over, but then did so after Promotion of Access to Information Act applications were submitted.

So now, the documents are available in all their gory detail. What do they tell us?

They are of course one-sided, but they do give us a sense of the strength of Kumba's case.

I'm not a lawyer, but how the department can continue to claim there was nothing wrong with Imperial's application is incredible. In a speech at the Africa Down Under conference in Perth, Minerals Minister Susan Shabangu said: "I have carefully examined these allegations and found no evidence of maladministration or irregularity in the manner in which these two prospecting rights were granted." (She was also referring to Lonmin.)

Compare that statement with the case made out in Kumba's papers, and you get a profound sense of disconnect - or at least I do. Maybe she didn't actually see the supplementary affidavits made last week.

It's also possible that the real reasons Shabangu does not want to review the decision are political. She may be leaving it to the court to deal with a problem which is a political hot potato.

If she is adopting this approach, then it would be the first example of the complications that arise for governance if relatives of senior politicians start getting the benefit of disputed decisions.

In the Sunday Times this week, President Jacob Zuma criticised the allegations that his family were unduly benefiting from lucrative business deals. Zuma told the Sunday Times: "Nobody has said, here is corruption. I think for people to think that if you are a Zuma you can't do business is a very funny thing, I tell you."

But actually, someone has said "here is corruption". Kumba's legal argument essentially rests on administrative grounds, and the company's main argument still lies in section 16(2)(b) of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA), which says the relevant official must refuse to accept an application for a prospecting right application where another person holds a mining right for the same mineral and land.

"... it is irrational, entirely unworkable and contrary to the object of the MPRDA to permit a situation where there are two mining programmes for the same mineral which exist simultaneously on the same land", Kumba says. However, Kumba alleges there are eight other grounds for review, and the new allegations go much further.

As Business Day reported in vague terms some time ago and as was reported in detail in Beeld last week, the new allegation is that some of Imperial's application was copied from Kumba's application. This emerged after Kumba got hold of Imperial's application through the legal process.

"It is clear from the copies of the extracts of the title in ICT's application are photocopied manipulated copies of the certified copy of that deeds which was in the SIOC (Sishen Iron Ore Company) application lodged in Kimberley," Kumba says.

The evidence seems overwhelming. The title deed in Sishen Iron Ore's application was certified by Bridget Engela, a commissioner of oaths.

"It is quite apparent from an examination of record that the extracts of the of the title deed contained in the ICT applications have been fraudulently manipulated to obscure Engela's certification stamps, by blanking them over with a piece of paper or card and then photocopying the pages," the application says.

The manipulation of these documents was "very amateurish" and left obvious signs as to the origin of Imperial's copies of the extracts from the title deed.

In fact, on occasion, the obscuring process was only partial and the remnants of the rubber stamps of the commissioner of oaths appears. In one case, part of Engela's signature still appears on Imperial's copy. On another occasion, the card used to blank out Engela's certification was placed back to front, so the words on the card were mistakenly photocopied instead of a blank card.

"ICT used at least part of the SIOC mining right application as a basis to prepare its own application and by so doing obtained an unlawful benefit to which it was not entitled by uttering forged documents," Kumba says.

Yet there is one weakness in all this that I can see at least. If the court were to agree with Kumba and reverse the decision to grant prospecting rights to Imperial, would it follow that the 21,4% residual mining rights would automatically go to Kumba?

Kumba has a good argument from a practical perspective, but this is different from the legal question, surely?

Anyway, we have yet to hear the department's and Imperial's counter-arguments, although Imperial has already said it is "shocked by some of the allegations". The point is that the case is going to take eons.

You can't help wondering who would lose most from a long drawn out case.

- Correction: last week I wrote about the question of how Imperial knew that ArcelorMittal's rights had expired.

I noted that former minerals department deputy director-general Jacinto Rocha "is adamant the leak came not from the department but from Kumba". This is incorrect. Rocha did say he was convinced the leak did not come from the department, but he did not suggest the leak emanated from Kumba. My apologies.