2,500 mining applications not finalised, just for 23/24

Bruce Whitfield interviews journalist Ed Stoddard (Business Maverick) and mining analyst Peter Major.

"More than 2,500 mining applications received in FY 2023/24, not one finalised"

That's how Ed Stoddard intros an article for Business Maverick that exposes the apparent collapse of the administrative capacity of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE).

The consequences for investment in the country's mining sector will be dire, Stoddard warns in the piece titled 'Mantashe reigns as the minister of no new mining as DMRE lacks admin capacity'.

Stoddard explains that the numbers came to light only because an IFP member of the National Assembly questioned Minister Gwede Mantashe about the number of successful applications for mining 'licenses'.

"It's interesting that it is always the parliamentarians who seem to have to drag this kind of information out of the DMRE, which does seem to have an aversion to transparency."

Is the amount of applications not finalised unusual, considering that the Department has been experiencing an administrative backlog for some time?

The TOTAL amount of unfinalised applications is unclear, Stoddard says.

"It first emerged again under a Parliamentary inquiry in February 2021. At that time the backlog stood at over 5 000... There were a couple of updates subsequent to that, (showing) that the number's been whittled down... but we don't know; presumably, someone at the DMRE knows the current extent of the backlog."

- Ed Stoddard, Journalist - Business Maverick

There doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency - or shame - around this, comments Bruce Whitfield.

"There's no sense that this is something we need to fix in the sense that South Africa's got an unemployment crisis, an earnings crisis, a balance of payments crisis..."

It doesn't seem that there are going to be any consequences either, Stoddard says.

He cites a comment posted on X suggesting that part of the problem is that many of the mining rights applications are actually 'dodgy'.

While this could possibly the case, it doesn't explain what is happening, or not happening.

"It raises then two questions: one, why do so many dodgy operators think they can make these applications to the DMRE and two, why haven't these applications then been rejected? Because a rejection would also be a finalisation."

- Ed Stoddard, Journalist - Business Maverick

The really devastating part of this dire situation is that no one currently at the DMRE knows how to fix it, laments mining analyst Peter Major.

"When Gwede Mantashe gets a question on it, you can see he's so far removed from the problems and even more removed from knowing how to fix it."

- Peter Major, Mining Analyst

Is there a single major contributing issue here, or is this a case of the DMRE falling apart as a result of a whole range of challenges?

It is a political problem, is Major's conclusion, as he says are most of the problems in South Africa.

"And, like all political problems it's a leadership problem. There's nobody leading the DMRE; there's nobody saying 'this is how we're going to do it, follow me'... 'and if you can't keep up we'll transfer you somewhere else, but you can't be here if you can't keep up'.

- Peter Major Mining Analyst

"You have people at the very top, starting with your mining minister, that you could ask 'should they be there?'. They don't know who to appoint, they don't know who to manage... and there's no consequence management. It's leadership and it's management, that's what the problem is. And we don't know if the people under them are good or bad."

- Peter Major Mining Analyst

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