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A lawyer involved in a court application against all three of the mining charters is hopeful that the ANC’s new leaders will facilitate a better working relationship between the mining sector and government.
Mining lawyer Hulme Scholes said: “In my application, I am backed by seven mining companies, and I already have one judgment in my favour that says I have locus standi [the right or capacity to bring an action or to appear in a court], but I might not have to push it all the way because there is a new energy that seems to have come in with the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as ANC president.”
Speaking to City Press on the sidelines of the IHS Energy South African Coal Export Conference in Cape Town this week, Scholes said that the current charter, which he wants to have scrapped, would attain the opposite of what it was intended to do.
Scholes wants the court to set aside the current charter, as well as the previous two.
“I want the court to set aside all three charters, while the Chamber of Mines wants only mining charter three [the current one] set aside,” he said.
In his application, which was filed at the Johannesburg High Court, Scholes is also seeking to compel Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane to amend the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act to provide for the transformation of the industry.
“I want them to amend the act to make it law; to move transformation from a policy to a law. Right now, it’s a policy. You can’t enforce a policy, but you can enforce a law,” he said.
Citing an example, Scholes said that, under the current Mining Charter, a young black mine worker will only be allowed to sell his shares to another black person, whereas a white person can sell to anyone they want to.
Scholes filed his initial application more than two years ago and, when the third Mining Charter was issued last year, he amended his application to include it.
He said previous mining ministers were much more competent and did not make political decisions unnecessarily.
“Administrators at the department of mineral resources make political decisions and not administrative ones,” he said.
The Chamber of Mines’ application to have the latest Mining Charter scrapped is set to be heard later this month in the Pretoria High Court
