Chamber of Mines asks for ruling on black owners

The Chamber of Mines said it asked the country’s High Court to rule whether companies can claim to have met black-ownership rules even after shareholders have sold their stake in assets.

The chamber, which represents operators including Anglo American Plc and Sibanye Gold Ltd., will be the applicant in the case while the Department of Mineral Resources will act as respondent after the parties initially agreed to approach the court together amid a dispute over how to interpret the laws, the Johannesburg-based lobby said Friday in an e-mailed statement.

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“The legal mechanism available to the parties necessitates a clear applicant and respondent, with an identifiable and clear point of dispute,” it said. “A joint application, by definition, suggests some form of agreement between the parties.”

The dispute over the ownership of mines comes after regulations were enacted in 2004 that compelled operators to sell 26% of their local assets to black South Africans by the end of 2014 as a way of redressing economic disparities created during apartheid rule. Some investors that acquired the so-called empowerment stakes subsequently sold them, diluting the companies’ black shareholding.

While 90% of the industry, weighted by the number of people employed, has met the requirement for 26% of shareholders being from historically disadvantaged groups, this has mostly been achieved by selling stakes to “one or two” people, rather than involving communities or employees, the mines ministry said May 14.

Only 20% of the industry “fulfilled the full requirement of meaningful economic participation,” it said.

- Bloomberg