Business
More Mining Rights Chaos
By Wiseman Khuzwayo, Business Report 27/8/10
Aug 27, 2010 - 9:08:00 AM

Two new mining rights controversies emerged yesterday as an Anglo American subsidiary and Impala Platinum (Implats) confirmed that other companies had been awarded rights that they believed should rightfully have been theirs.

But while Anglo is headed for court, Implats's problem solved itself, when the new rights holder gave the affected rights up voluntarily.

These add to the list of controversial rights granted to the politically well-connected Imperial Crown Trading, which was given rights that iron ore miner Kumba believes should have been awarded to it, and HolGoun, the company headed by former public enterprises director-general Sivi Gounden, over rights Lonmin believes it rightly owns.

Anglo acknowledged yesterday that it was taking the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) to court over its decision to grant coal prospecting rights to little-known black economic empowerment company Melody Street Trading in 2009.

This contradicted a decision by former minerals and energy minister Buyelwa Sonjica that Anglo Operations Limited (AOL), which applies for and holds mining rights for Anglo subsidiary Anglo Coal, should be awarded the rights.

In 2008 AOL had applied for prospecting rights to Bankfontein 9, in Sasolburg. The farm is adjacent to Anglo Coal's New Vaal Colliery, which supplies Lethabo Power Station. AOL had applied for the prospecting rights at the department's regional office in Welkom but it was turned down on the basis that it already held too many rights.

AOL then successfully appealed to Sonjica but, it is claimed, the decision was never communicated to the department. Business Report has a copy of the memo signed by Sonjica confirming that AOL would get the rights

Melody then applied for the rights and was granted them in July 2009. One of the owners of Melody Street is Nicholus Maluba, a businessman from Pretoria. Maluba confirmed yesterday that he had been served papers by AOL but claimed he was "too poor" to fight his case. At stake is a potential coal resource of up to 540 million tons.


Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu last week announced a raft of strong measures to beef up the department's administrative systems with regard to licences, including a six-month moratorium on the acceptance of prospecting applications as well as measures to ensure transparency.

The new cases will fuel further criticism of how badly the department has, in the past, made decisions about granting prospecting rights. The issue has led to negative publicity internationally but Shabangu's spokesman, Jeremy Michaels, said yesterday that "we have acknowledged that there are problems and the measures announced by the minister are aimed at fixing those problems". He added: "We are not going to comment on the details of this particular case but we can say that we will not oppose AOL's application."

AOL did not attend a meeting with the department and Melody Street on Monday but instead served legal papers.

In a separate development, Bloomberg reported that Implats yesterday said HolGoun's Keysha Investments 220 had applied for some rights at Implats operations. Keysha said later in the day that it had been mistakenly awarded the rights and that it had written to the department asking it to "exclude Implats" properties.

The department had, Keysha's spokeswoman Anastasia Maimonis told Bloomberg, "overlooked" the fact that the rights belonged to Implats when they were awarded to Keysha.