Conflict of interest in monitoring green laws
Environmental oversight of mines should not be in the hands of department tasked with promoting the sector
In three recent judgments, SA’s courts made adverse findings about actions taken by the Department of Mineral Resources and expressed concern about the competence of some of its most senior officials. In November, the High Court in Pretoria found that mining company Aquila Steel had "established a high degree of institutional incompetence" on the part of the minister of mineral resources, the director-general of the Department of Mineral Resources, the deputy director-general: mineral regulation at the department and its Northern Cape regional manager and "a lack of energy in resolving the issues which arose from that very incompetence". Also in November, in the case of AngloGold Ashanti vs the Department of Mineral Resources, the Labour Court found that the department’s officials, including its acting chief inspector of mines, had been guilty of "reckless issuances of section 54 notices", had ignored the notion of proportionality and had "acted outside the bounds of rationality" wh...
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