The Minerals Council of South Africa, said in a statement that an estimated R4, 9 billion was spent on social development programs in 2023.
But the Mining Affected Communities United in Africa (Macua) Spokesperson, Magnificent Mndebele, says the figures released by the Minerals Council, look impressive, until information from 2018 is considered. Back then, the Council said mining companies committed about R7, 5 billion. “Counting from 2018 to 2023, you can see that actually the money committed to social development has not increased. Instead it has gone down” says Mndebele.
Macua said in a statement, that it wants the 7th Administration, to prioritize the amendment of the Mineral Petroleum Resources Development Act, to hold mining companies accountable to uphold just social and labour plans.
Allan Seccombe, Head of Communications at the Minerals Council of South Africa, says the June 18 statement released, explained the methodology used to arrive at an amount of R4, 9 billion.
Seccombe says his organization needs to understand Macua’s and Wamua’s methodology in order to assess the point they are making.
He says the Council’s figures were drawn from public reports of all 12 companies.
In addition, a survey shows about R2.9 billion in a single year was spent on social development, which mainly focused on education, health and infrastructure, which is more than double the spend on community development in 2018.
“This year’s survey showed 11 companies spent R966 million in a single year on enterprise
development. Further than that, we commissioned an independent study of various transformation matters, including mine community development spending, in 2018.
That report estimated 2018 mine community development spending at R1.16 billion. This, compared to the latest Minerals Council survey, suggests an increase over time” he says.
He also said it must be remembered that a mining company’s expenditure on social and labour plans are for a five-year period. Expenditure will therefore consider flactuations over an investment period of 5 years.
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