Minister Gwede Mantashe Extends Mining Charter Draft Deadline to August

South African Mineral Resources Minister, Gwede Mantashe has officially postponed the finalisation of the new mining charter which will detail requirements for several targets, including black ownership levels.

Mantashe has extended the deadline by a month at the request of stakeholders, now allowing for the period of public comments up to the end of August. This will then take the experts until October or November 2018 to finally gazette the Charter, he said.

Speaking at a media briefing in Boksburg, at the end of a two-day mining summit in the East of Johannesburg, Mantashe said the deadline had been granted to allow for the gathering of “genuine views of people. Not just issues that they think quick, quick.”

Mantashe also emphasised his passion for the mining industry

I'm not in the mining industry because of deployment. This is an industry I love. This industry made me. This industry invested in me #MiningCharter #MiningSummit

— Gwede Mantashe (@GwedeMantashe1) July 8, 2018

Uncertainty around the charter has deterred investment into a sector that accounts for 8 percent of gross domestic product in the world’s top platinum producer.

A draft of the charter published last month extends to five years from one year the time that existing mining permit holders will have to raise black ownership levels to 30 percent from 26 percent.

It also proposes a requirement that 10 percent (a third of the 30 percent black ownership target) for new mining right applicants be granted free to communities and qualifying employees, dubbed “free carry”, which industry body The Minerals Council South Africa has opposed.

The charter, published for public comment before entering into law, is part of South African affirmative action rules aimed at reversing decades of exclusion under apartheid.

The government and miners had been at loggerheads over a previous version of the charter, which the Chamber of Mines industry body, now the Minerals Council, criticised as confusing and a threat to South Africa’s image with investors.

(Reporting by Wendy Mothata and Tanisha Heiberg; editing by Jason Neely and Jenni Baxter)