Modern Mining May 2024

have higher employment are not within the former homelands.” Employment in non-former homelands is nearly double that in former homeland areas. It is immediately obvious from the graph in the Harvard study that most mining areas in South Africa overlap with municipalities that contain former homelands within their boundaries. This brings us to an impor tant point. Municipalities in remote areas tend to struggle. This would be true whether mining was present or not – where mining is present, employment lev els are slightly higher on average. However, one would intuitively expect mining presence to improve municipal performance. This is not happening, in part because municipalities have become dependent on mining companies to become de facto service pro viders. Mining companies simply cannot afford this. Attaining a social licence to operate is one thing; substituting for government where service delivery is absent is another. So, not only does the government have to do more to unleash investment into the mining industry, it also has to connect mining to green industrialisa tion. At the same time, the mining industry itself has to engage differently at the local municipal level and at the national policy level. By way of example, I recall attending an Anglo American SDG conference in late 2022. Participants around the table all indicated that the Social and Labour Plans (SLPs) prescribed in national mining law were too restrictive. Expectations of mining companies were essentially that they would pro vide services that the local municipality should be providing. This puts investors off because it is unsustainable. Far more optimal would be to invest in building greater institutional capacity in those municipalities and, at the very least, develop bet ter integrated development plans (IDPs). IDPs are currently often drawn up by consultants with no skin in the game, and monitoring and evaluation of efficacy is absent. Mining companies need to desist from substituting municipal functions and instead build the human capital in those municipalities that will sustain the area long beyond the life of mine. Supporting well-crafted, practicable IDPs will go a long way to building labour-absorbing economic dynamism. While the Harvard review is sobering, South Africa has an opportunity to grow out of the current sclerosis: “Employment patterns underscore that it is possible to generate economic opportunity in rural South Africa”. Many of the pathways they sug gest are sensible. To my mind, connecting mining to green industrialisation, as well as building local municipal performance capacity, will prove instru mental in realising this opportunity. Of course, this needs to happen alongside fixing the energy crisis, resolving the logistics bottlenecks, and eliminating crime. We have our work cut out for us. 

Mining currently provides over 400 000 jobs.

Black South Africans continue to face poverty and joblessness at very high rates.

Employment patterns underscore that it is possible to generate economic opportunity in rural South Africa.

May 2024  MODERN MINING  39