Shakespeare noted that “there is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”.

Last week’s great tweet by Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe urging South Africans to celebrate their wonderful treasure chest of mineral wealth has been taken at the flood and, hopefully, will lead to fortune.

The Minister’s tweet was flashed onto the big screens at the presentation of the surprisingly upsided results of precious metals mining company Sibanye-Stillwater last Thursday.

It was then also praised by Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman, who read the tweet to the gathering of mining investors, analysts and journalists.

It was lofty comment against the background of mining receiving a government hammering for the past two decades.

“South African mining has a bad name because we are very loud about the negative and very quiet about the positive. When you do good, you will not make it onto the news. We must begin to talk positively about our industry. It is a good industry. It makes things happen and contributes to the economy,” Mantashe tweeted.

South Africa has $2.5-trillion worth of metals and minerals in the ground that can boost South Africa’s overall economy if extracted competitively and marketed smartly.

Mantashe’s words put emphasis on the potential that government must legislate to free up.

The modern world cannot do without the commodities that are mined and, as Minerals Council South Africa has stated so many times, mining and the minerals are integral to society and really matter for the growth and development of modern economies.

Smartphones could not function without copper, silver, gold, palladium, platinum, ceramics, titanium dioxide and lesser-known tongue-twisters like indium tin oxide.

As Minerals Council South Africa CEO Roger Baxter has often pointed out, a wind turbine uses 335 t of iron-ore-based steel, 4.7 t of copper, 13 t of fibreglass, 3 t of aluminium and 1 200 t of reinforced concrete – all mined ingredients.

To replace a single 3 000 MW coal-fired power station, 15 000 MW of wind turbine capacity needs to be provided, requiring the equivalent of a 2 MW wind turbine every 240 m between Durban and Cape Town.

A car contains close to a tonne of iron and steel, 100 kg of aluminium and 19 kg of copper, with the more environment-friendly hybrid requiring double the copper. The modern compact fluorescent light bulb needs bauxite, lead, copper, limestone, nickel and phosphorous. Toothpaste contains silica, limestone, aluminium, phosphate, fluoride and titanium, and women’s make-up contains mica and talc.

If it cannot be grown, it has to be mined, and, without mining, there can be no electricity.

Over and above the hundreds of billions of rands that mining contributes to South Africa’s gross domestic product and the million jobs that it supports, mining-linked downstream industries give the country hundreds of billions more rands in extra sales value and tens of thousands of additional jobs.

Also, with a bit of national encouragement, the industry has the ability to lift export revenue well beyond the current mark and create hundreds of thousands of additional jobs.