Some 10% of South Africa’s gold production and 8,1% of coal
production are controlled by historically-disadvantaged groups,
said Chamber of Mines of South Africa acting CE Dr Frans Barker at
the South African Mining Week held earlier this month. On the
management front, growing from a zero base a few years ago, 12,5%
of management in the mining industry is from a
historically-disad-vantaged background. “The number of women
has in-creased quite rapidly.
“Obviously on both the latter fronts, much remains to be
done,” Barker added.
At a procurement level, he said goods to the value of R8-billion
are bought annually from black economic empowerment
companies.
Overall, the mining industry has made significant progress in
empower-ment over the last ten years, said Bar-ker, empowerment
being justcrushing equipment iron ore one of six major economic changes experi-enced since
1994.
For one, the ownership base of the industry has changed.
“A decade ago South African mining companies –
constrained by financial and trade sanctions and exchange controls
– were predominantly owned by South African shareholders and
a small number of wealthy families. Currently about 76% of the
industry’s market capitalisation is foreign-owned,”
noted Barker.
Another change has been that the South African mining industry has
globlime mining and processingalised.
“South African mining companies have extended their sphere of
influence to the global stage, becoming globalised mining companies
in their own right. “South Africa’s top mining
com-panies have operations on virtually every continent.”
Barker also believes that South African mining companies have shed
their historic industrial baggage. “Sanctions and exchange
controls forced South African mining companies to purchase noncore
industrial assets as a way of attempting to grow their businesses.
“Since 1990, the iuganda small stone crusher pricendustrial assets of the mining companies
have been deconglomerated and the mining companies have focused
their attention on their core businesses. “This has enabled
them to become globally competitive.” This is then also one
of the reasons why Barker argued that mining com-panies should not
be again forced into industrialisation, with the demands of
beneficiation set upon it by a proposed Beneficiation Bill.
“There are . . . those that rather simplistically believe
that mining companies should also become manu-facturers. Or in
othhammer mill crusher with priceser more basic and extreme terms, they say an iron-ore miner
should now also build cars and exhaust systems . . . Mining
companies rightly reject the rationale that since they mine the raw
material they should also become involved in downstream
manufacturing. It’s a similar scenario to cattle farmers,
who, because they farm cows, should also be made to open and run
steak houses or to be in the business of making fine leather shoes.
“Beneficiation is a commonly misunderstood process, with
extractive mining operations at one end of the value chain and
dihow to crush rocks for gold miningfferently skilled manufacturing entities at the opposite end.
“Mining companies cannot and should not be compelled to
diver-sify their primary business focus by becoming manufacturers
of beneficiated mineral products. This will reverse most of the
gains made in recent years, which is that with a greater
concentration on their core business, this country’s mining
com-panies have become first-class global competitors.
“The industry has been encouraged by government’s
recent approach to mineral beneficiation. Government has indicated
that it would be acceptable if the primary mining sector encourages
downstream beneficiation rather than becoming directly involved.
This seems to be a reasonable and generally acceptable
approach.” The last ten years have also seen mining companies
change in order to compete in a globalised environment, said
Barker.
Workplace arrangements have been changed. “The industry now
applies the most modern world-best management practices and there
has been a sig-nificant concentration of effort on developing
skilled human capital and on incentivising the workplace.
“The old farm fence boundary system which confined mining
companies to limited-lease mining areas has been changed to the
global model of seeking blue-sky potential. “The industry is
focused on growing its reserve base and is not confined to
individual lease areas. This included shifting the role of the
mining company away from the provision of all goods and services
for mining industry interests, towards a more facilitating
role.” Linked to this, another change in the mining industry
has been that human capital is now considered an asset as opposed
to a cost, said Barker.
Equipping workers with skills and enabling them to follow a career
path has had ramifications for productivity improvement in the
industry despite significant declines in employment numbers.
“The South African mining industry now has a better skilled,
more motivated and more long-term work force than ten years
ago.”