Have we strangled the golden goose?

The South African mining industry is in a state of drastic decline. There is more need than ever for journalists, among other stakeholders, to hold to account those who are systematically choking the sector through over legislation, corruption and greed.

According to just about every industry pundit who spoke at the Menar Mining Journalism Training seminar in October, it is a depressing time for those who directly depend on the mining industry for their livelihoods.

With the mining sector so beleaguered, South Africa’s economy suffers in general.

In the 1980s, South Africa’s mining companies held about 50% of the world’s market capital. Today this figure sits at about 3%, with over 6 000 local mines abandoned.

What happened?

Constant clashes with unions demanding ever-increasing pay that far exceeds inflation rates; mining policies that shift and change faster than stockpiles in a coal yard; corruption so chasmic that even South Africa’s 4-km-deep gold mines cannot get to the bottom of it all; and a morally bankrupt power utility that seems determined to prove that Africa is not just deepest, but darkest as well.

Where once international investors saw the country as a golden goose, they now look at this land of mineral wealth and shy away – not because of a lack of potential in the resource value beneath the ground, but because of the untenable risk inherent in the human element that lives above: we who trample our God-given abundance underfoot with abandon and abject abdication of responsibility, fighting over what scraps remain of the economy that once was, instead of standing together to build a new, better one.

It is incumbent on us aspiring journalists to help demarcate a path to the renewal of this sputtering sector.

But how?  

By remaining informed, independent in our thinking, and by never being afraid to ask the hard questions so that society can know the truth about the holes in the ground that fill the gaps in our economy.

By Darren Parker