The EFF rejects this Budget Vote. In June 2013, the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill was introduced in the National Assembly and the Bill introduced state ownership and sharing in profit of mineral and
petroleum resources. Section 86 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill that you were so quick to withdraw, Minister, and unconstitutionally soon after you were appointed as a Minister, was going to give the state 20% stake in all new exploration and production rights, from the effective dates of such rights.
The Bill was never signed because we have a government that serves the interest of capital and French oil companies, and undermines Parliament and does not respect the Constitution. You did not sign the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill because it would have given the state and people of South Africa 20% ownership of the exploration rights to the Brulpadda block south of Mossel Bay which instead is going to benefit multinationals only.
The amendments of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act was going to disrupt the status quo in the mining sector that has robbed South Africa of its mineral wealth and continue to kill mineworkers. In fact, Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill would have allowed South
Africa to allocate shares in mineral and petroleum resources as one of the many models South Africa need to explore to fund the Sovereign Wealth Fund.
However, you don't want the state to control the mineral and petroleum wealth that will lead to a process of rapid beneficiation of South Africa's mineral resources into finished products. Instead, you want to continue with the colonial practice of exporting raw material only to buy back finished products.
This is why you don't want to listen to the people of Xolobeni in the Eastern Cape. You go to Australia to receive instructions from Caruso. Your consultation meetings with the community are nothing but a cover-up. You undermine the wishes of more than 200 households, their livelihood and right to land, and ridicule ultimate sacrifices of women and men like Sikhosiphi Bazooka Radebe who was killed defending the right to choose economic path. The people of Xolobeni have a right to say no to mining; have a right to choose an economic path and a developmental state that owns and controls strategic mineral resources.
Strategic mineral resources would be at the forefront of exploring alternative economic development model instead of being controlled by narrow interests of foreign-owned capital.
As the EFF, we will table a private member's Bill to amend the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act to ensure that quotas are introduced on the exportation, that no more than 30% of raw mineral resources are exported, and that 70% or more of raw mineral resources are processed into finished industrial products within South Africa. Part of what the amendments to the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act will ensure that the manufacturing and processing of mineral resources prioritise the participation of black companies in mineral beneficiations. That is why it important that we re-nationalise Iscor.
Let's maximally expand the capacity of the African Exploration Mining and Finance Corporation as a state-owned mining company to reposition the state as a central player in the development, management and use of South African wealth to create jobs. We should move towards a situation where a state- owned mining company operates all coal mines owned by Eskom to stabilise the
state-owned company instead of some misguided restructuring efforts sponsored by Investec and the Rothchild to privatise a national strategic asset.
Eskom is losing too much money and paying premium price on the coal which it owns through evergreen contracts with criminal syndicates and export surplus coal to generate revenue to the fiscus and possibly the sovereign wealth fund. We must discontinue private ownership of Sasol and Mittal Steel, and provide them with concrete developmental mandates to contribute to the sustainable industrial development of South Africa.
Minister, your former Deputy Minister, Godfrey Oliphant went to the Northern Cape to a much fanfare to grant mining permits to the small-scale miners that you and your government have criminalised as illegal miners. And you've just said it now but you must learn from your former Deputy Minister about this progressive move. But the people of Kleinsee, whose efforts to livelihood you have criminalised, are being shot at daily by the police who collude with mining companies and you are not even saying anything to protect those people. I wonder why you are
doing this because you claimed that you were leading Cosatu and other formations such as the SACP. But I do understand that there is no SACP anymore. It is time to regulate and promote small-scale mining in Kimberley, Namaqualand Coast, Marikana and other places like Emalahleni. This is the only way to ensure community and locally-driven mining development. This is the only way we will revitalise neglected mining towns such as Welkom in the Free State, Okiep and Poffader in the Northern Cape, and transform locally-driven mining development into mining-based manufacturing industries.
Lastly Minister, government must establish a database of all former mineworkers or their close family members in the Eastern Cape - where you come from by the way - KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, Limpopo and everywhere in the country, and ensure that each and every one of them gain access to their pension fund. There is too much money that belongs to workers sitting in pension funds earning huge interest while former mineworkers and their families go through unimaginable poverty. I'll please hand over my notes to you, hon Minister, so that you do not run away from Xolobeni next time. [Time expired.] [Applause.]