The Big Stick [editorial]

Johannesburg, Nov 05, 2009 (Business Day/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- MRLS | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- AS ANY childcare expert will tell you, if you want to get difficult kiddies to behave, it's best to try to reinforce the positives, not just berate them for the negatives.

This is not the kind of advice Mineral Resources Minister, Susan Shabangu has taken to heart, apparently, if the speech she gave this week to the Chamber of Mines AGM is anything to go by.

Shabangu laid into the mining industry for its failure to "live up to the spirit and intent" of the five-year-old mining charter. She could find not one good thing to say about the industry's efforts to transform.

Most companies had not met the charter's employment equity targets, Shabangu said, and even where they had, "fronting" was widespread, and white women might be filling some of the posts.

Shabangu complained that the industry hadn't done much about skills development; the focus had been on "basic skills", not on the skills required for meaningful transformation. She accused companies of failing to implement the social and labour plans that mining companies have to commit to as a condition for being granted mining licences.

She also upbraided companies for, in effect, procuring from the wrong black suppliers - going outside mining communities for goods and services instead of capacitating the locals (a criticism that caused some puzzlement, given that not much steel is manufactured in rural mining communities).

Shabangu's department has conducted a review of progress on charter targets. The findings have not yet been released, and we will have to wait to see just how well or badly the industry has fared. But though there clearly are laggards, many mining companies have invested huge amounts of time, effort and money in transformation - and a scan of their websites and their sustainability reports will show that some have not only met targets but exceeded them.

It would be helpful if Shabangu had acknowledged that. Unfortunately, it is partly the industry's own fault that she hasn't. As she hinted in her speech, relations between the Chamber of Mines and the department lately have been rather tense. Certain chamber members, it seems, refused to co-operate with the department's review of the charter. Hard to believe they would do anything so silly, but it clearly has rebounded on the industry. So the industry has work to do to rebuild trust.

But Shabangu might find a more balanced approach works better if she wants the industry collaboration she needs.

She might take a lead from her colleague, Deputy President (and former general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers) Kgalema Motlanthe , who this week gave the industry plenty of credit for its efforts - but still managed to make it quite clear that "we do need to expedite the transformation of our industry".

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