South Africa's junior mining sector, which is crucial for exploration and the industry's future, is still being buried under the mounting slag heap of state failure -- and there is no light at the end of this tunnel.

The Junior Mining Indaba, an annual two-day event in Johannesburg organised by Resources4Africa, always exudes a certain brash confidence that is tempered by the harsh realities of South Africa's woeful investment environment.

If anything, this year's event has underscored the grim reality that by almost any measure, South Africa is falling even further behind the global exploration curve.

Let's start with the applications backlog for prospecting, mining and related rights. That is now back up to more than 5,000, making a mockery of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy's (DMRE) past statements that the bottleneck was being slashed.

This is a key obstacle to exploration and other kinds of mining investment and explains why South Africa, which accounted for more than 5% of global exploration expenditure in 2004, now attracts less than 1%.

It was first revealed in February 2021 that the backlog amounted to more than 5,000, and in November last year, the DMRE said it had been whittled down to 2,625.

But now it seems that the overall number is back to more than 5,000.

"Two weeks ago, our parliamentary committee was told that the number was over 5,000. I asked why, and the response was that...