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Speaker 1: Well more warnings this week that in fact, our mining

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Speaker 1: industry is not investing in enough new minds. And if

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Speaker 1: you consider the history of mining in South Africa, how

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Speaker 1: important they it's been to our economy. And while the

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Speaker 1: proportion of mining for our economy has been declining, it

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Speaker 1: still matters. Look how important the increase in the goal

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Speaker 1: price has been and look what that's done at to

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Speaker 1: government finances. For example, in the It's a investment conference yesterday,

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Speaker 1: hearing that we're not getting enough capital for future projects.

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Speaker 1: David van Vac is a mining analyst, among several other things. David,

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Speaker 1: good evening, I really appreciate the time, Good afternoon. Why

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Speaker 1: are we finding it difficult to get capital to start

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Speaker 1: new minds? Is there a shortage of minerals to prospect?

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Speaker 2: No, I think that South Africa has plenty of minerals,

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Speaker 2: you know, And the ministry introduced a new cadastar system

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Speaker 2: for prospectors and so on, which really is an indication

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Speaker 2: that since nineteen ninety four we actually actually gutted the

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Speaker 2: Jew Council, you know, and also Mintet in the mining sector,

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Speaker 2: you know, because we've had annual publications on the mineral

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Speaker 2: resources of South Africa. I'm sitting with one on my

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Speaker 2: that that's six hundred pages long, that was published in

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, and you know, the government has since

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Speaker 2: kind of privatized prospecting, you know, so that the government

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Speaker 2: depends on the private sector to find the minerals, when

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Speaker 2: in actual fact, we should as the government, know where

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Speaker 2: the minerals are. But besides that, I think that we've

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Speaker 2: got a serious problem in this country because we have

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Speaker 2: a mining industry that is more than one hundred and

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Speaker 2: fifty years old, and we've got many declining mines and

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Speaker 2: mining towns and things like that, and we really have

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Speaker 2: to think beyond mining now. Even if the gold price

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Speaker 2: is where it is at the moment, probably above five

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars and arms, that is only because there's a

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Speaker 2: war in the Middle East going on at the moment,

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Speaker 2: you know, And as soon as that war dissipates and

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Speaker 2: it looks as if it's now reaching its end, the

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Speaker 2: gold price will fall dramatically. And so we cannot really

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Speaker 2: do our economic planning on the basis of commodity prices,

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Speaker 2: the same as a copper price, the tungsten price, the

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Speaker 2: chrome price and so on, all of which are very

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Speaker 2: high because frankly, they are shooting away the minerals except

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Speaker 2: for the gold. Now we need to ask ourselves why

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Speaker 2: are we mining. Are we mining to develop a post

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Speaker 2: mining economy, or are we mining to take advantage of

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Speaker 2: these sudden booms, these booms that come as a result

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Speaker 2: of conflicts in the geopolitical situation in the North or wherever.

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Speaker 2: You know, every time there's a warm mineral prices tend

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Speaker 2: to suddenly increase and leap up, and we all get

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Speaker 2: very excited about it. But we need to be consistent

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Speaker 2: in our planning and we need to say for who

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Speaker 2: are we mining and for what are we mining? Are

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Speaker 2: we mining for a post mining economy or were simply

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Speaker 2: mining to feed the global military industrial complex. If we're

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Speaker 2: mining to transform our economy into a post mining economy,

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Speaker 2: then we need to say how do we actually beneficiate

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Speaker 2: our minerals. And we can't do that because we gut

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Speaker 2: it the state industries that been officiated minerals in this country,

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Speaker 2: such as escort for example, such as SASSL for example.

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Speaker 2: You know, a whole range of industries that we simply

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Speaker 2: privatized and they were turned into scrap metal by the

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Speaker 2: people who bought them instead of actually sustaining them. So

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Speaker 2: now we are sitting with a situation where Donald Trump

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Speaker 2: and Trump won't last forever. Fortunately, he has imposed tariffs

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Speaker 2: on all our manufactured goods, but not on our minerals,

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Speaker 2: so we can get a lot of money for our minerals.

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Speaker 2: But our manufacturing industry is de industrializing very rapidly, and

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Speaker 2: it's been ongoing since ninety four, but he speeded it

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Speaker 2: up very dramatically. We read in the newspapers every day

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Speaker 2: about factories and things closing. That is where our minerals

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Speaker 2: should be going. Our minerals should be going to our

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Speaker 2: factories manufacturing our manufactured goods. We need to see what

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Speaker 2: did the Koreans do, what did the Japanese do, what

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Speaker 2: did the Chinese do? To actually break out of that

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Speaker 2: cycle of the global economy that defines the global self

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Speaker 2: as streat labor and resource suppliers to the north. We

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Speaker 2: actually need to break free from that, break free from

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Speaker 2: the cheap labor extructive economy that we are in.

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Speaker 1: So okay, I mean just your question of why do

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Speaker 1: we mine? I could argue we mine because we need

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Speaker 1: new minerals and new resources for say, renewable energy, and

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Speaker 1: we could either buy from somewhere else, we could produce

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Speaker 1: our own and if we have the deposits of those

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Speaker 1: things here, we should do it ourselves. At some point,

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Speaker 1: we are still going to need the mining industry.

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Speaker 2: We are going to need the mining industry. But if

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Speaker 2: we look, for example, at manganese, we are exporting ninety

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Speaker 2: percent of manganese. We've got more than eighty percent of

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Speaker 2: the world's resources. Now manganese is critical for alternative energy.

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Speaker 2: Now why is it that our manganese is not being

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Speaker 2: used to add value in manufacturing the batteries and the

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Speaker 2: other requirements for the alternative energy system that we are having.

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Speaker 2: We are also not being very creative about what we're

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Speaker 2: doing around mining. For example, if we look at the

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Speaker 2: Free State, if you look at one shaft in the

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Speaker 2: Free State, in a Sabunian mind, it releases something like

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Speaker 2: six thousand liters of me saying per second, which methink

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Speaker 2: could be captured to generate energy for example. Now Savania

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Speaker 2: is already generating industry from that methank for that particular shot.

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Speaker 2: But we've got six thousand abandoned shops. Now we could

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Speaker 2: have a whole big gas industry, but instead to appeace

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Speaker 2: Donald Trump, We've a treated by five billion rounds of

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Speaker 2: gas from the United States every and it didn't help

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Speaker 2: us at all. He has just been as hostile as

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Speaker 2: ever towards us the regardless of the fact that we

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Speaker 2: are bowing escaping before him. We need to look at

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Speaker 2: our own interests. We need not look at the interest

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Speaker 2: of some global superpower, whether it's Tryina or Russia or

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Speaker 2: the United States. We need to look at where do

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Speaker 2: we want to be in fifty years time for our people.

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Speaker 1: So I mean, obviously, I mean I completely agree with you.

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Speaker 1: I know that if I were speaking to someone in

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Speaker 1: the mining industry now, they would probably say, the biggest

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Speaker 1: reason that we are not seeing more investment in mining

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Speaker 1: for our people four fifty years from now is because

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Speaker 1: government policy is sort of all over the place. Now, government,

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Speaker 1: I know, will completely deny that you started this conversation

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Speaker 1: mentioning the cadastral system a sort of geological map. It's

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Speaker 1: taken forever to get the same kind of system, but

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Speaker 1: Tswana's had for about twenty years. I suppose is government

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Speaker 1: part of the problem here. There's no proper policy, it's

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Speaker 1: not being implemented.

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Speaker 2: Only part of the problem in the sense that government

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Speaker 2: inherited a system, that system was benefiting only five million

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Speaker 2: people instead of fifty million people. But there were some

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Speaker 2: good aspects to it. The state enterprises that were there

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Speaker 2: actually absorbed a lot of what we produced in our minds.

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Speaker 2: But besides that, there was a geological system within the

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Speaker 2: state enterprises. It was called the Council for Geoscience, who

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Speaker 2: did actual prospecting and everything. And I've got a library

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Speaker 2: full of their annual reports of where the minerals are,

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Speaker 2: what minerals are there, how many minerals are there. We

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Speaker 2: can't pretend that we don't know. Now we want to

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Speaker 2: set up a cadastral system for the private sector to

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Speaker 2: come into prospecting for things that we should be doing

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Speaker 2: for ourselves. Now. The moment a private sector person comes

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Speaker 2: and he prospects, he then sells to a mining company

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Speaker 2: that has an agreement with Japan or China for the

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Speaker 2: off take for the iron, for the manganese, for the chrome,

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Speaker 2: for whatever. So we don't own those minerals one to

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Speaker 2: our minds, even though the MPIDA says that all minerals

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Speaker 2: belong to the state or the people of South Africa.

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Speaker 2: Once a mining company has got a mining license, the

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Speaker 2: minerals belong to them. There's a huge gap in the

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Speaker 2: legislation there. But in any case, we have departments in

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Speaker 2: our government that have got figure heads as ministers, but

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Speaker 2: there's no content in those departments because they've been douted.

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Speaker 2: They've taken out all the all the functionalities out of

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Speaker 2: those departments and privatized them. And so the government is powerless.

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Speaker 2: It cannot it cannot manage its own minerals, it cannot

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Speaker 2: manage its own labor, it cannot manage its own environment,

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Speaker 2: it cannot manage anything that needs to be managed by

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Speaker 2: a government. The only thing that has not been privatized

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Speaker 2: in this country is the flag.

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Speaker 1: David fromback, thank you mining and strong views there