The principle elements facing the mining substitute in SA, it emerged at the “Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town this week, are, shock, shock, executive advise of no process and incompetence. By now, even a sympathetic response from President Ramaphosa is suspect. Right here and there folk were heard muttering: “Determined. What’s in it for the ANC and its cadres?” A valuable deal of money, it emerges.
By Martin Welz*
The African Mining Indaba in Cape Town heard on Monday that mining companies are ready to magnify their funding in tasks in SA by 84% – if the executive tackles the dysfunction plaguing the processing of mining permits and approvals for self-generation tasks, as smartly as “constraints” facing our railways and ports.
The Fraser Institute’s Annual Search for of Mining Companies, which turned into once revealed in April, ranked SA in 75th advise out of the 84 jurisdictions within the 2021 funding attractiveness index. This turned into once the worst ranking SA had been given since 2009.
Addressing the conference on Tuesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa hinted the executive might per chance perchance presumably also now be “originate to discussing” requests from mining companies to permit for the private operation of Transnet Freight Rail’s devoted heavy-haul coal, manganese and iron ore export traces.
Rail and port constraints price mining companies R35bn in misplaced earnings in 2021, in accordance with Minerals Council SA.
Did we hear the President show manganese? That had staunch obtained a entire unique which implies when, nearly concurrently, investigative journalism crew amaBhungane revealed the extent of the ANC’s joint stake with a “listed” Russian oligarch in an extremely winning manganese mine within the Kalahari.
“We must beef up our railways, which rep fallen into disrepair, and the ports, that are no longer performing at a level where we make a selection on them to attract,” Ramaphosa agreed.
Minerals Council SA CEO Roger Baxter had acknowledged on Monday that there are R30bn of capital tasks looking ahead to approval, but there might per chance be a backlog of 4,500 smartly-known licence applications at the department of mineral sources & vitality, where it takes extra than 350 days for mining and exploration licence applications to be processed.
Ramaphosa’s response: The executive furthermore understands the pressing must fix the regulatory and administrative considerations “that had crept into” the utility route of for mining and exploration licences.
Leaving sceptics asking: what might per chance perchance presumably also the ANC’s hobby be in “simplifying” guidelines and “dashing up” approvals? Need we be reminded that corruption flourishes in unregulated “emergency” environments?
DA chief John Steenhuisen told the nation on his return from Ukraine: “The ANC most absolutely does no longer focus on for South Africa on Ukraine, and that turned into once a gargantuan portion of my message to the folk I met there.” However why does the ANC no longer focus on for the folk of South Africa on the warfare in Ukraine?
In March the Democratic Alliance misplaced no time in taunting the ANC that its abstention turned into once on story of a US-listed Russian oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, is listed as having donated R7.5m to the ANC.
Puny alternate, but it absolutely now transpires, the DA individuals were on the staunch monitor; they staunch seriously underestimated the price of his relationship with the ANC.
The latest account from the investigative journalists at amaBhungane decidedly upped the ante.
Already in 2015 amaBhungane raised the subject of the ANC’s relationship with Putin’s Russia, when they unearthed the secret phrases of a proposed nuclear energy place deal with Russia. (“The indicators were there from early on, fuelling a rising suspicion that Zuma and Putin hoped to bypass a competitive serene route of by smuggling a detailed settlement in by the aid door,” they noted there. )
Features of that proposed deal that inflamed suspicion were:
- It contained extra clauses beneficial to the bidder (Russia) than any of the a host of 4 bids (from France, China, the United States and South Korea).
- It contained what amounted to a veto clause as adverse to any a host of bidder from working with South Africa with out Russian consent.
- It required the South African executive to make a “special, beneficial regime” in tax and “a host of monetary issues” for the Russian bidder – on a trillion rand electricity generation deal that might per chance perchance presumably receive decades to complete – and, many imagine, would most likely bankrupt the nation.
Why would the Russians were so assured in their calls for? In at the present time’s South Africa, the quiz would be phrased in every other case: what turned into once/is in it for the ANC and its cadres in high locations?
AmaBhungane’s latest account revealed this week affords no longer lower than a extra plausible explanation for Ramaphosa’s abstention on the UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and his scenario with facilitating the shipping of manganese.
The account launches in with a blunt assertion: “United Manganese of Kalahari (UMKL) is determined to alter into an unbridled money cow for the ANC, specifically its funding front Chancellor House. UMK’s riches and its Russian connections make a real motive for the occasion’s equivocation on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Monetary records from Cyprus prove that UMK paid out a staggering R2.4bn in dividends in 2020.”
Chancellor House’s indirect 22% portion of these dividends would rep amounted to R528m. It has since increased its stake within the company by looking to uncover one other shareholder, so that dividends totalling a entire bunch of thousands and thousands in 2021 and former will proceed to head with the scurry into the ANC’s biggest declared donor.
This is in a position to perchance presumably also be inferred from the accounts of the Russian half of the UMK joint mission, a Cyprus-registered entity called Original African Manganese Investments (NAMI) whereby Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg (the identical) owns shares in UMK.
In 2018 Vekselberg and 6 a host of smartly off Russian “oligarchs” perceived to be shut to the Kremlin were made Special Designated Nationals by the US executive. Their assets within the US were frozen.
In March this twelve months, following the invasion of Ukraine, the sanctions in opposition to Vekselberg and others were intensified along with his yacht and jet, together allegedly price $180m, being frozen. The yacht, a 2000 ton floating palace named TANGO, is registered within the Cook Islands. After the freezing, the FBI went a step extra and seized the important-boat in April.
The South African held 51% in UMK is owned by Majestic Silver Trading 40 (MST) which is a politically related South African consortium together with Chancellor House, Pitsa Ya Setshaba Holdings (PST) and a Kalahari Neighborhood Trust.
Chancellor House turned into once identified as an ANC front in 2005 when it turned into once suddenly inserting affords within the mining and vitality sectors, typically below questionable circumstances.
This present day it no longer makes any secret of its role. What has escaped gaze is the evidently important significance of UMK within the diagram of issues. The scale of dividends, revealed within the monetary statements of NAMI show that the ANC is no longer going to rep any similar accurate supply of money: R15m each and every from Chancellor House, UMK and MST, making a entire of R45m per twelve months.
AmaBhungane concludes: “This [..] potential that the relationship with a supposed Kremlin insider is key to [ANC] occasion funds.”
[Extracts from amaBhungane latest report published with permission. You can read the full report on their website at www.amabhunghane.org]Read furthermore:
- The worth of ANC-Russian loyalty – Katzenellenbogen
- ‘Name a warfare a warfare’ – Ambassador for Ukraine tells SA
- SA’s untangle the fable surrounding the ANC’s stance of neutrality within the Russian-Ukrainian warfare
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