With this year marking the 150th anniversary of South Africa’s diamond business, one would imagine that the country has been completely explored and that it should be looking to an end being brought to this pioneering industry. But this is not so.

In an interview with Mining Weekly, De Beers Consolidated Mines CEO Philip Barton stated clearly and explicitly that South Africa still has two massive plusses going for it – the first being that it remains highly prospective and the second that it remains underexplored.

To quote Barton in full, he stated: “We haven’t covered a fraction of South Africa yet from a diamond exploration perspective.”

This was some revelation from the lips of the head of the pioneering company, but it was not all. Another big bonus is new technology, which is creating far-reaching new potential.

Unsurprisingly, De Beers has a lot of data to which new technologies and new knowledge can be applied that will result in discovery that benefits the South African economy and creates jobs.

But now for the bad news: De Beers is cutting its South African exploration budget to zero from its previous levels of R30-million to R40-million a year.

The reason is that it has been unable to obtain a prospecting licence from the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), which has held up 54 of its prospecting licence applications for as long as two years.

This shows that South Africans are prepared to permit the DMR to shoot this country’s economy in the foot.

Yes, by definition mining is a depleting industry but, in the case of De Beers and in the case of many other companies, repletion is being prevented from taking place

The new assets are hard to see. Clearly, economic obstruction by the DMR must be brought to a rapid end.

Being a finite horizon, without exploration, mining cannot survive, but this point is not taken by the DMR and neither is the reality of exploration being a high-risk pursuit.

Governments in other global mining jurisdictions understand this and go out of their way to support exploration.

But this is not understood by the DMR, which continues to put off many who are willing to invest.

Universities are producing mining graduates, but DMR obstruction is limiting their employment opportunities, which should not be tolerated.

Under the present dispensation, the existing mining sector is a dinosaur, as it is being prevented from finding new assets to replace the old ones.

The development of a genuine junior mining culture is now urgent to ensure that mining’s horizon is extended.

Failure to foster replenishment will result in an intensification of illegal mining and the risk of death and destruction coming with it.