Gwede Mantashe and the missing exploration strategy

7 April 2022

Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe is a fantasist, living in a fantasy world.

That’s one possible explanation for his outrageous claim that his much spoken of exploration strategy has been published in the government gazette.

There’s no sign of any such gazette. No strategy has been presented to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee. The logical conclusion is that his claim was bogus.

The strategy is supposed to make mineral exploration in South Africa easy and thus attractive to investment. Mantashe has previously spoken about his plan to attract 5% of international mining exploration expenditure to South Africa within five years.

We are halfway into that period and South Africa’s share of exploration expenditure has gone down even further from when he announced his plan. Exploration is key to the future of the industry because without it, South Africa will not open new mines to replace the ones that are becoming exhausted.

Mantashe’s been promising the exploration strategy for years. President Cyril Ramaphosa even implied it was imminent when he opened parliament in February.

It should be safe to assume that if the strategy had been published, Mantashe’s department would have said something about it. When questioned at the Joburg Indaba PGM Day, Mantashe insisted the strategy had been made public.

Instead, the industry is scratching its head, trying to turn up a copy of the allegedly “gazetted” strategy.

It’s possible that when cornered by the question, Mantashe jumped the gun and claimed the policy had been published when it is scheduled to be so in the next few days.

If that generous explanation is true, then it still leaves him with a problem: By saying something that isn’t true, he’s undermined his own credibility and the credibility of South Africa as a place where serious people will invest serious money.

It’s likely that the reason Mantashe has been unable to produce a credible exploration plan is because all the things he would have to announce that would lead to greater enthusiasm for, and investment in exploration, would run directly counter to established ANC mining policy.

Sadly, even if we do see the policy in the next few days, it will not be likely to impress.

Issued by James Lorimer, DA Shadow Minister of Mineral Resources, 7 April 2022