{"id":2145,"date":"2012-09-26T15:43:44","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T15:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=2145"},"modified":"2012-09-26T15:55:59","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T15:55:59","slug":"sa-mining-trapped-in-the-19th-century-ramphele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=2145","title":{"rendered":"SA mining trapped in the 19th century – Ramphele"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mamphela Ramphele<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

South Africa needs to dig itself out of a 19th-century mining business model, academic Mamphela Ramphele said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a media briefing ahead of an international leadership education conference in Cape Town, she said a failure to change the nature of the industry was having devastating repercussions.<\/p>\n

“We’ve just had this tragic Marikana debacle, and what was in evidence there is the consequence of South Africa failing to transform the mining industry from a 19th century business model, which relies on cheap migrant labour, very archaic mining technology and a… low-skilled, labour-intensive industrial base.”<\/p>\n

She said change could come from leaders of business schools, leaders in the private mining sector and citizens putting their heads together.<\/p>\n

“I want to make sure my three-year old grandson, in 30 years’ time, is in a country he can be proud of; and that will not happen, unless we deal with the legacy issues which are holding us back.”<\/p>\n

Ramphele, who also chairs the Gold Fields board, said her recent visit to the mining house’s Australian operations showed the industries in the two countries were like chalk and cheese.<\/p>\n

“Of course, they were established in different periods, but that doesn’t stop us, because one of the things South Africa is underplaying is technological innovation capacity,” Ramphele said.<\/p>\n

She referred to the London Underground rail system, and said tunnelling technology developed in South Africa had contributed towards this.<\/p>\n

Ramphele said the ability to innovate and change to a new mining model was not lacking in South Africa.<\/p>\n

“We just have not applied our minds because there isn’t the political leadership and will to create a framework for a mining industry of the 21st century.”<\/p>\n

She also took aim at industry bosses.<\/p>\n

“The private sector, in the form of the mining industry, has also not exercised its mind about how do you leverage the huge endowment… in the form of mineral resources; leveraging that as a way of positioning South Africa as a globally competitive economy… .”<\/p>\n

[ad 1]<\/p>\n

Ramphele said South Africa had missed the benefits of the last mining boom, while other countries flourished.<\/p>\n

“The other thing we do in South Africa — which is really inexplicable, that’s the polite way of putting it — is that we are exporting value to China, to India, to everywhere.<\/p>\n

“We mined the riches the dear Lord gave us, gave it to others to process, which means we are exporting jobs, then we re-import (processed minerals) at huge costs for our own purposes, which is why we are de-industrialising.”<\/p>\n

She said re-industrialisation in mining would depend on a rethink of the whole value chain.<\/p>\n

Ramphele is also a businesswoman and medical doctor, and was an anti-apartheid activist. – Sapa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa needs to dig itself out of a 19th-century mining business model, academic Mamphela Ramphele said on Wednesday. Speaking at a media briefing ahead of an international leadership education conference in Cape Town, she said a failure to change the nature of the industry was having devastating repercussions. “We’ve just had this tragic Marikana … Continue reading “SA mining trapped in the 19th century – Ramphele”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[782,1295],"tags":[1155,1406,308,794,813,12250],"class_list":["post-2145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-in-depth-coverage","tag-gold-fields","tag-london-underground","tag-mamphela-ramphele","tag-marikana","tag-mining","tag-south-africa"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Mamphela_Ramphele.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2145"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2148,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions\/2148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}