Mr Speaker, when she spoke at the mining indaba earlier this month, Minister Susan Shabangu suggested that all was well with the South African mining industry. The question is: Compared to what? She told us about increased numbers of mines, revenues and jobs. Use different periods of comparison, and I could as easily show results crashing, production at a 50-year low and thousands of jobs being lost.
The point is: We have more minerals under our soil than any other country in the world. But for that to mean anything, we need mining to take them out and sell them. For there to be mining there must be investment, which we do not have. Some established large miners are still putting money into their mines, but we have had only 3% of new mining projects worldwide between now and 2020. Mining juniors simply cannot get funding for their proposals. That is due to the international perceptions of our industry.
Last year we were rated by the Frasers Institute as the 54th most desirable destination for mining investment, and that was before Marikana and everything else that followed. This message was brought home at the mining indaba, where South African-born Rangold Resources chief executive officer, Mark Bristow, said they would rather continue with the gold mining operations in Mali, despite the civil war, than put money into South Africa.
He said in South Africa there are problems with the reliability of legislation and policy, and no recognition of the importance of new investment. Another guest at the indaba summed it up for me. He said:
The people at the event listened politely to Minister Shabangu, but they were there with no intention of investing in South Africa; they would rather invest in the rest of Africa.
There has been a long list of bad news for mining in South Africa. We lost out on the resources boom because of bad and badly implemented laws. Then Marikana showed us the consequences of our labour dispensation designed to accommodate the interests of the labour arm of the ruling party rather than the workers. A disastrous funding model for Eskom means the massive rises in power prices will push more mines into unprofitability. How can Minister Gigaba be proud of the fact that Medupi is 58% complete when it was supposed to have been finished last year?
When the inevitable consequences of all this manifested in planned lay- offs, the mask that pretended to welcome investment dropped. The ANC accused companies of stealing our resources; threatened to take away their mining licenses and accused them of blackmail. What international investor would be crazy enough to put their money into a country where the environment is so obviously hostile?
If that was not bad enough, the mining sector is now being faced by amendments to the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, which are either very poorly thought out or simply mad. This law includes provisions to nationalise mine dumps to make government approve every mining share transaction on the Stock Exchange, limit exports of certain strategic products and open a way to force the sale of quantities of these in South Africa at a price set by the state. This is surrounded by lots of happy talk about beneficiation.
Those in mining might be right if they think they've heard this before. The Diamond Second Amendment Act, seven years ago, limited exports and forced sale of some products to the state. State intervention was disastrous. Before we had some 3 500 diamond cutters and polishers; now we are left with only about 500.
The National Development Plan is cautious about beneficiation. It echoes the warning that we don't have the electricity and it will suck capital from other parts of the economy. If there was money to be made from beneficiation, business would have done it already. These projects will not be economically viable. Where we win on the manufacturing swings, we will lose on the mining roundabouts.
Last week Mr President announced, or hinted at, because he didn't announce anything, more increases in mining taxes. At the root of all this is a failure to understand mining or the South African state. The ANC is held prisoner by its own socialist mythology that fatally overestimates the state's capacity.
The theory is that we will have a few very clever people in government who will decide where to direct money and activities. They will succeed where thousands of companies and billions of rands have not. If such clever bureaucrats existed, please move them to run housing, hospitals and indeed the issuing of mining licences, because they can really use some planning genius.
The truth is that such state capacity does not exist. It never has throughout recorded history and the ANC's socialist ideals have failed everywhere they have been tried. Yet we are going to try them again. John Templeton called them the most expensive four words in the world, the phrase that says: "This time it's different".
And when the ANC's mining policy fails, more jobs will go. Those people who lose jobs or never get them in the first place because of stifled growth are the real victims. The government will not take responsibility. It will blame a host of imaginary enemies from its own nightmare subconscious, which is rooted in the last century - enemies from international capitalism to the United States' imperialism to an unpatriotic bourgeoisie - all of this shows that this is why the ANC government cannot and should not continue to rule.
Is it not interesting that every time there is a project to be done, the ANC decides on the plans, the money, it hires people and then it all goes wrong? Then we get an appeals from Minister Manuel, among others, that we should all take responsibility for putting it right. Well, we can start right here in this House, where committee chairpersons protect officials rather than holding them accountable.
Minister Manuel, I did enjoy your image about the development roadmap and the GPS. The problem is that the ANC's fondness for turning only left means we are going round in circles. [Laughter.] The only map on your GPS is the map of Red Square. [Applause.]
Now, you would think that money would not be spent on Ministers' homes if the Ministers ordered that money should not be spent on those homes. The media has published a letter which shows that the President knew about the expenditure on Inkandla. The excuse of Ministers for not knowing deserves a prize for sheer gall. I think perhaps the people at Inkandla can thank the opposition for now getting access to a new clinic. If we hadn't complained, I doubt very much whether it would have happened. That shows the folly of the project in the first place. [Time expired.]