Every Friday, SAfm’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: South Africa’s mineral strengths and stock exchange strengths must be deployed simultaneously to create jobs, Utshalo insisted this week.

Creamer: Yes, our minerals endowment is really strong and our stock exchange is the 20th strongest in the world, but both are shrinking. So, people are insisting now that we take a spotlight on this, because we need to remember that our whole history of being here in Johannesburg is the result of that stock exchange providing funding for gold mine building. That gold money has built our economy here and Utshalo is now insisting that to get jobs going now, developing mines with money from the stock exchange is a must and needs to be repeated.

We must make sure that the mineral sector does not shrink and make sure that South Africa makes full use of its stock exchange. There is also a need for National Treasury to become far less passive about this. We see that the Reserve Bank is very concerned. Hopefully, this ability to create jobs by promoting our great minerals endowment and also funding it with money from the stock exchange is realised as the way to go.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s private sector is collaborating to enable smaller investors to buy into South Africa’s big copper riches in the Northern Cape.

Creamer: We have got the Northern Cape copper riches, but we have a situation where the public sector is not interested in allowing the small investors to get in there, as governments of other mining jurisdictions enable. The other stock exchanges of the mining world make sure that there is inclusivity. South Africa’s public sector talks inclusivity but does not enable the small guys to get in not just the big guys.

What has happened now is Utshalo has again become involved in ending this despite the passive behaviour of the public sector’s National Treasury and has created a linked up within the private sector to enable smaller shareholders to augment their holdings as is done on Australia, where Orion Minerals is primarily listed.  

Utshalo and Orion have linked up and said, look, the public sector is not going to do anything, so let us, as the private sector, open this up and make sure that small investors can also get further into the Prieska copper mine development and Okiep copper mine project in the Northern Cape. We have a situation where Orion, which is also in Johannesburg, has more than 23 000 small South African investors.

Half of them are historically disadvantaged South Africans and Orion is saying it just shows you that South Africa does not need laws to enforce historically disadvantaged involvement because 25% of its shareholding is held by historically disadvantaged South Africans who have an appetite to invest in mining and exploration. Utshalo and Orion are now making sure that the small South African investor is able to get a growing shareholding in South Africa’s Northern Cape copper riches in spite of the public sector remaining passive in the same way as its small Australian shareholders is able to do.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly.