Opinion / Columnist
South Africa may face Matopo Hills moment
11 Jul 2011 at 05:06hrs | Views
Late 19th-century Cape Times correspondent Vere Stent, in his account of Cecil John Rhodes's successful attempt to put an end to the 1896 Ndebele revolt in present-day Zimbabwe, relates an encounter the British imperial warlord and plunderer had with a young Ndebele chief.
Waving his rifle about – to which Rhodes objected – the young chief said: "You will have to talk to me with my rifle in my hand. I find if I talk with my rifle in my hand the white man pays more attention to what I say. Once I put my rifle aside I am nothing. I am just a dog to be kicked."
With the resolutions of the ANC Youth League congress at Gallagher Estate in June, it sometimes feels too much like Rhodes's Matopo Hills moment. Another young chief (of the political variety), also insolent to the elders of his organisation, is waving his rifle at what is generally accepted to be a white establishment – the mining sector. His name is Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League president, and his angry, young and marginalised constituency is his rifle. He is threatening to unleash it on the ANC to convince it to nationalise the mining industry, banks and other key economic institutions.
The ANC Youth League believes doing this will result in a huge number of employment opportunities and an industrial revolution of sorts.
If anything has defined this screaming match since the ANC Youth League released a paper in February last year, it has been the sheer political and tactical incompetence with which the ANC and the mining sector have handled this.
Timed to coincide with the 2010 Mining Indaba in Cape Town, the ANC Youth League paper caused great disquiet among mining investors, prompting minerals minister Susan Shabangu to declare nationalisation would not happen in her lifetime. Pathetically, all the ANC could say was nationalisation was not its policy. But it remained mum on how the matter – given it was being openly discussed everywhere – would be handled.
That apparent inability to articulate a roadmap for a patently important issue continues to make South Africa a last choice among the prime mining destinations for investors.
Despite the amateurish handling of the debate so far, it provides the ANC, the mining sector and South African society with an opportunity to find answers to some searching questions – some of them linked to the political solution reached in negotiations to bring an end to apartheid.
Others concern the myriad opportunities successive democratic governments have missed to ensure the country extracts maximum benefit from a sector which formed the backbone of this country's industrialisation project. For the ANC, it provides an opportunity to debate whether it is wise to continue treating the Freedom Charter as religion, when it was drafted at a time when state ownership of strategic businesses and sectors was in vogue.
Haphazard reinterpretations of the document can never replace structured intellectual discussion within, which would resolve for its members the way the charter should be applied in a modern, capitalist world.
Assuming the ANC were to take a decision to amend the constitution and confiscate mines from their current licence holders, would that not set off a frenzy to ensure these operations are managed by people who will fulfil the wishes of politicians who wish to enrich themselves?
Would such a scramble not destroy an ANC already riddled with infighting, partly emanating from a desire to control access to state resources for personal gain?
Despite proclamations the mines would belong to the state, the reality is they would effectively come under control of the ANC or any party that runs the government in future.
Perhaps the biggest question is whether those who call for this move are driven by a desire to improve the poor's material conditions, or to address the results of imperialist plunder of the land and its minerals by the likes of Cecil John Rhodes and the Randlords. While the ANC Youth League claims this is purely driven by the poor's material conditions, its rhetoric continues to make reference to history.
The Mining Charter set off a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) project to redress the injustices of history, but it has been an abject failure. Not only is black ownership at pitiful levels due to black investors' inability to access capital, some of the early transactions were nothing more than political-influence swop deals that made some politicians incredibly rich.
It is now recognised this was a mistake, and the revised Mining Charter mandates the inclusion of workers and communities in future deals. It is as silent on how these transactions will be financed as its enforcement is utterly useless.
The mining sector – historically formed on the back of colonial and foreign fortune-seeker plunder – appears determined to maintain the unsustainable status quo. Having lost its influence on the government in 1994, it has quietly remained in the background and did its best not to upset the apple cart, lest it be noticed by society's more radical elements. That strategy has backfired, and its response to the debate has resembled a rabbit caught in a car's headlights. Having missed out on the last commodities boom, it looks set to miss the next one due to poor energy and transport infrastructure and inadequate water supply, and is straining under the weight of severe community unrest in Sekhukhuneland.
Serious thinkers, like Joel Netshitenzhe, have raised even more important questions on whether the country is capable of making any decision on the mining sector without a mining-sector strategy.
Clearly, the country has missed various opportunities to expand the rent it extracts from the sector. It continues to allow companies to dig iron and manganese ore in the Northern Cape and ship them unprocessed to overseas clients. That is unlike platinum and chrome, which are mined, smelted and refined in the country before being exported. That is also why the Rustenburg and Brits areas are serious industrial hubs with potential, while the Northern Cape remains an abjectly poor, rural province where no one wants to settle or invest money.
Simply taking over the mines and handing them to politically captured boards will not solve our inequality and unemployment problems. What is needed is an urgent national discussion on how the sector should contribute to development, including the pertinent question of the state's role.
Given the BEE project's abject failure, the government needs to consider seriously whether it should not be the strategic BEE partner of first choice so it can influence boardroom discussion on commodity value-chain development.
The mining sector must also wake up to the reality that relying on compromises at Codesa, which have sometimes proven unsustainable in the long term, is strategically incompetent. It should consider seriously whether it wants to continue throwing silly tantrums when poor citizens demand higher rent, or it should press the state and ANC to get their house in order and form a mining investment arm as a proxy of the South African people.
If these questions are not answered, South Africa might yet face its own Matopo Hills moment. In that event, the Ndebeles believed accomplished liar Rhodes when he assured them they would get their land back. No thing such happened. Instead, they and the Shonas were confined to small reservations where abject poverty prevailed while Rhodes and his band of murderers carved up the country for their and imperial Britain's benefit.
A century later, a man called Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi led bands of angry youths who called themselves war veterans on a vicious campaign of farm invasions that the world continues to talk about today.
Lately, his comrades have implemented a catastrophic policy of indigenisation – again relying heavily on the wounds of history to pursue an unsustainable policy. South Africa's choices and consequences could be that stark.
Waving his rifle about – to which Rhodes objected – the young chief said: "You will have to talk to me with my rifle in my hand. I find if I talk with my rifle in my hand the white man pays more attention to what I say. Once I put my rifle aside I am nothing. I am just a dog to be kicked."
With the resolutions of the ANC Youth League congress at Gallagher Estate in June, it sometimes feels too much like Rhodes's Matopo Hills moment. Another young chief (of the political variety), also insolent to the elders of his organisation, is waving his rifle at what is generally accepted to be a white establishment – the mining sector. His name is Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League president, and his angry, young and marginalised constituency is his rifle. He is threatening to unleash it on the ANC to convince it to nationalise the mining industry, banks and other key economic institutions.
The ANC Youth League believes doing this will result in a huge number of employment opportunities and an industrial revolution of sorts.
If anything has defined this screaming match since the ANC Youth League released a paper in February last year, it has been the sheer political and tactical incompetence with which the ANC and the mining sector have handled this.
Timed to coincide with the 2010 Mining Indaba in Cape Town, the ANC Youth League paper caused great disquiet among mining investors, prompting minerals minister Susan Shabangu to declare nationalisation would not happen in her lifetime. Pathetically, all the ANC could say was nationalisation was not its policy. But it remained mum on how the matter – given it was being openly discussed everywhere – would be handled.
That apparent inability to articulate a roadmap for a patently important issue continues to make South Africa a last choice among the prime mining destinations for investors.
Despite the amateurish handling of the debate so far, it provides the ANC, the mining sector and South African society with an opportunity to find answers to some searching questions – some of them linked to the political solution reached in negotiations to bring an end to apartheid.
Others concern the myriad opportunities successive democratic governments have missed to ensure the country extracts maximum benefit from a sector which formed the backbone of this country's industrialisation project. For the ANC, it provides an opportunity to debate whether it is wise to continue treating the Freedom Charter as religion, when it was drafted at a time when state ownership of strategic businesses and sectors was in vogue.
Haphazard reinterpretations of the document can never replace structured intellectual discussion within, which would resolve for its members the way the charter should be applied in a modern, capitalist world.
Assuming the ANC were to take a decision to amend the constitution and confiscate mines from their current licence holders, would that not set off a frenzy to ensure these operations are managed by people who will fulfil the wishes of politicians who wish to enrich themselves?
Would such a scramble not destroy an ANC already riddled with infighting, partly emanating from a desire to control access to state resources for personal gain?
Despite proclamations the mines would belong to the state, the reality is they would effectively come under control of the ANC or any party that runs the government in future.
Perhaps the biggest question is whether those who call for this move are driven by a desire to improve the poor's material conditions, or to address the results of imperialist plunder of the land and its minerals by the likes of Cecil John Rhodes and the Randlords. While the ANC Youth League claims this is purely driven by the poor's material conditions, its rhetoric continues to make reference to history.
The Mining Charter set off a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) project to redress the injustices of history, but it has been an abject failure. Not only is black ownership at pitiful levels due to black investors' inability to access capital, some of the early transactions were nothing more than political-influence swop deals that made some politicians incredibly rich.
It is now recognised this was a mistake, and the revised Mining Charter mandates the inclusion of workers and communities in future deals. It is as silent on how these transactions will be financed as its enforcement is utterly useless.
The mining sector – historically formed on the back of colonial and foreign fortune-seeker plunder – appears determined to maintain the unsustainable status quo. Having lost its influence on the government in 1994, it has quietly remained in the background and did its best not to upset the apple cart, lest it be noticed by society's more radical elements. That strategy has backfired, and its response to the debate has resembled a rabbit caught in a car's headlights. Having missed out on the last commodities boom, it looks set to miss the next one due to poor energy and transport infrastructure and inadequate water supply, and is straining under the weight of severe community unrest in Sekhukhuneland.
Serious thinkers, like Joel Netshitenzhe, have raised even more important questions on whether the country is capable of making any decision on the mining sector without a mining-sector strategy.
Clearly, the country has missed various opportunities to expand the rent it extracts from the sector. It continues to allow companies to dig iron and manganese ore in the Northern Cape and ship them unprocessed to overseas clients. That is unlike platinum and chrome, which are mined, smelted and refined in the country before being exported. That is also why the Rustenburg and Brits areas are serious industrial hubs with potential, while the Northern Cape remains an abjectly poor, rural province where no one wants to settle or invest money.
Simply taking over the mines and handing them to politically captured boards will not solve our inequality and unemployment problems. What is needed is an urgent national discussion on how the sector should contribute to development, including the pertinent question of the state's role.
Given the BEE project's abject failure, the government needs to consider seriously whether it should not be the strategic BEE partner of first choice so it can influence boardroom discussion on commodity value-chain development.
The mining sector must also wake up to the reality that relying on compromises at Codesa, which have sometimes proven unsustainable in the long term, is strategically incompetent. It should consider seriously whether it wants to continue throwing silly tantrums when poor citizens demand higher rent, or it should press the state and ANC to get their house in order and form a mining investment arm as a proxy of the South African people.
If these questions are not answered, South Africa might yet face its own Matopo Hills moment. In that event, the Ndebeles believed accomplished liar Rhodes when he assured them they would get their land back. No thing such happened. Instead, they and the Shonas were confined to small reservations where abject poverty prevailed while Rhodes and his band of murderers carved up the country for their and imperial Britain's benefit.
A century later, a man called Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi led bands of angry youths who called themselves war veterans on a vicious campaign of farm invasions that the world continues to talk about today.
Lately, his comrades have implemented a catastrophic policy of indigenisation – again relying heavily on the wounds of history to pursue an unsustainable policy. South Africa's choices and consequences could be that stark.
Source - iol
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