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The organisers are now taking their very successful concept to Asia - with the first Asian event due to take place from October 29-31 in Singapore.

Of course, much attention was focussed on Mining Minster Susan Shabangu's speech, as it always is, and she seemed to put the lid on the nationalisation debate when she said the ANC task team had found that nationalisation is not a viable policy for SA.

She said that the ANC would adopt a policy on this issue that would be in the best interests of SA.

Shabangu laid the blame for the nationalisation debate at the door of the mining industry, saying that it had not been implementing the mining charter and that through the use of fronting and the non-response to socio-economic needs had raised the issue of nationalization.

Also at the Indaba, Trevor Manuel quashed speculation that nationalisation was the centre point of ANC policy when he reiterated: "When you have someone like Mining Resources Minister Susan Shabangu saying that nationalisation will only happen over her dead body, then that is as a clear a message as you can get," he said.

He also stressed that President Zuma had also come out against nationalisation.

"When people like those say this, then it has far more weight than some youngster making comments to get press headlines," he said.

Manuel said that nationalisation, if it had to go ahead, would entail a change to the constitution, which meant a 75% majority in the National Assembly and that all nine provinces had to agree, as the bill of rights recognised private ownership of property and that if the mines were nationalised the owners would have to be paid out and the country could not afford that.

Shabangu was also quite critical about the safety records of mines, with the platinum miners in particular being singled out.

She highlighted health and safety in her keynote address on Tuesday, saying her department has worked hard to step up the monitoring and evaluation of compliance. Where necessary, she said, Section 54 of the act had been invoked to halt or suspend operations of mines or sections of mines found either to be unsafe or not compliant with the law.

She noted that latest figures show that mining fatalities dropped 3% from 127 in 2010 to 123 for 2011, but noted there had already been 13 fatalities in the mining sector this year.

"The recent spate of fatalities are also a reflection of some CEOs' refusal to make meaningful change and take personal responsibility for health and safety issues," she said.

She was particularly critical of the platinum mining industry, saying she was concerned about the lack of improvement in compliance and fatalities in the major platinum mines.

She noted the platinum sector alone contributes about 30% of all fatalities.

She said the department would monitor these mines through intensified inspections and group audits.

Much attention was focuses on the outlook for the various commodities - most of day one is taken up with outlooks for the major metals groups.

In general 2012 is expected to be a pretty good one for producers of industrial and precious metals, with a healthy outlook for prices, with gold expected to rise above US$2,000 an ounce, copper above $9,000 a tonne and platinum at $1,800 by Q4.

But there was a word of caution and as one speaker put it - there's "a ghost stalking commodity markets," - the fear of a return to the days of 2008/09.

The main concerns raised were the European economic situation, demand from China, what the US Fed does and how the US economy grow this year.

It's the base and precious metals that are looking fairly good. With global growth expected at around 3% in 2012, and it is important that China is having a soft landing. But analysts reckons 3% is a good number for the metals and mining sector.

The recovery will be hard going, but a steady grind higher for prices going forward is expected - with tin, palladium, lead and zinc to lead the way.

Another feature this year was the huge foreign government delegations.

The Australian contingent was out in force reflecting their increased involvement in mining activities on the continent. And the Australians come with a proven pedigree of running successful mining operations in their own country, often in difficult conditions.

Australian minerals and resource companies have more projects in Africa than in any other region of the world with total current and projected investment estimated to be well over US$50 billion.

To quote the stats there are at least 230 Australian companies with approximately 650 projects in mining exploration, extraction and processing spread across 42 countries in Africa.

The level of interest in investing in African mining continues to grow, and the optimism about the mining industry in Africa, a feature of the 2011 mining indaba, was still evident this year.

At the various African government presentations, it was 'standing room only' as conference participants jostled with each other for a space to hear what the various ministers had to say.

The major African mining destinations were well represented, but the ministerial mining forums gave some of the less well known countries an opportunity to tell investors what their country has to offer.

But these ministers faced some serious questions from potential investors, reflecting their concerns about the obstacles faced by mining companies on the continent.

There were often probing questions about access to power supply - a major concern for miners - as well as infrastructure shortcomings, taxes and royalties, resource nationalism and rising costs.

And of course there was a lot of talk about sustainability challenges with the CEOs of three major miners have revealed what they believe are the main sustainability issues facing mining companies world wide.

Climate change, social upliftment, carbon emissions, resource nationalisation were all raised. But the miners are cognisant of what they do on a global basis and stressed actions should benefit the entire community.

Part of the debate was that companies have to align their business objectives with the particular country they are making the investment in and they have to ensure that there are no tensions between what the local country believes the developers are going to put in place versus what the companies are wanting to put in place.

They all stressed the need to incorporate renewable energy into building mines and developing new projects, due to the scarcity of infrastructure and rising costs of energy in Africa.