IS the often frosty relationship between South Africa’s government and mining industry beginning to thaw?
There were unusually strong signs at this week’s Joburg Indaba that years of mistrust and confrontation are being replaced by a more cooperative relationship, with the Minerals Council South Africa and the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR) appearing to find more common ground on regulation and investment.
Ntokozo Nzimande, the DMPR’s deputy director-general for mining, mineral and policy development, said a “trust deficit” between government and industry had been one of the biggest problems when mineral resources minister Gwede Mantashe took office in 2018.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the Joburg Indaba on Wednesday, she said that trust deficit “got fixed”.
“Today, I don’t know how many times I speak to Mzila. I’m sure we call each other almost every day,” she said, referring to Minerals Council CEO Mzila Mthenjane.
Mining law
Perhaps the clearest evidence of the warmer relations is the Mineral Resources Development (MRD) Bill, which amends the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) and is now before the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) – the forum where government, business, labour and community representatives negotiate major economic and social policy changes before they go to Parliament.
The latest publicly available draft was gazetted under Government Notice 6210 on May 20, 2025, with public comments closing on August 13 that year.
It caused considerable friction. The Minerals Council complained that its earlier input had barely surfaced in the wording and warned that the bill, in its then form, would not encourage investment or growth.
Among the most contentious provisions were empowerment requirements for prospecting, which were subsequently removed, and concerns about how the Mining Charter would be incorporated into law.
The industry’s concern was reinforced by a 2021 High Court ruling on Mining Charter III. The court found that the charter was a policy instrument rather than binding law and upheld the “once empowered, always empowered” principle, meaning previous empowerment transactions would continue to be recognised for existing mining rights.
At the time, Minerals Council president and Northam Platinum CEO Paul Dunne said the proposed legislation had “serious shortcomings” and warned Mantashe that the industry intended to engage “very, very robustly”.
The language this week was considerably different.
Nzimande said the DMPR had gone to the Minerals Council in July to engage its office bearers directly on what they wanted the legislative review to achieve.
“What product do you want to see come out of this legislative review?” she recalled asking Dunne and his team.
The discussion was “very constructive”, she said. Now that the bill was at Nedlac, “we are at one in almost everything”, with the treatment of historic mine dumps one area where the parties had yet to find agreement.
Dunne, who joined Nzimande on the panel, gave a similar account from the industry side.
“The industry was in deep shock” when the first draft appeared, he said. “I’m pleased to say ... our engagements have been fruitful.”
While the Nedlac process limited what could be disclosed about the revised bill, Dunne said: “On the whole, I think there is a working piece of legislation that we could guide through Nedlac with the help of everybody and get it into the parliamentary process and complete the piece of work that the industry so desperately needs.”
Nzimande suggested the thinking behind mining policy itself was also progressing. The first generation of post-apartheid lawmakers had been dealing with an economy in which the immediate task was to dismantle discrimination and open participation, she said.
“The X we are solving for today, much as the transformation project remains critical, the X has evolved,” she said.
“This is where I think we are finding each other more with industry and other role players.”
The challenge now was to retain transformation while balancing it against “the realities of today”, she said.
Mthenjane struck much the same note. Transformation could not succeed without an economy capable of expanding and absorbing more people, he said.
“I think that realisation is dawning now ... that we need economic expansion with transformation.”
He pointed to changes affecting prospecting in the revised legislation as an example of government taking greater account of the commercial realities of early-stage exploration.
Cooperation
The improvement in relations has gained a more formal structure since mining was selected in August as one of four new growth drivers under the third phase of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Government-Business Partnership, alongside tourism, infrastructure and agriculture and agro-processing.
The partnership aims to help lift economic growth above 3% and contribute to the creation of one million jobs by 2030.
Dunne said many obstacles to mining investment did not sit within the DMPR alone. They spanned departments and regulators and could not always be resolved through traditional engagement between industry and government.
The partnership, he said, provided a mechanism to bring those institutions together, with the DMPR and Minerals Council carrying “joint accountability” for delivering agreed outcomes.
Mining companies still face major operating constraints, particularly weak rail and port performance at Transnet and limited access to electricity transmission capacity.
The Minerals Council has warned that unreliable logistics restrict bulk commodities including coal, chrome, manganese and iron ore, while grid constraints are limiting new energy investment even after the end of widespread load shedding.
The potential economic benefits are significant.
The Minerals Council estimates that sustained annual growth of 3% in mining could add about R65bn to South Africa’s GDP in real terms and support between 50,000 and 100,000 additional jobs by 2035.
“These estimates help explain why mining has been elevated within the national growth agenda,” Dunne said.
Mining competitiveness, he added, should therefore not be viewed “solely through the prism of industry interests”.