Some have received the revised version of the Mining Charter with indifference. A community activist such as Glen Monnye of the booming Limpopo mining town of Mokopane, where most people live in shanties, argues it is "still screwing the poor and placing traditional leaders first". But the revised charter should be music, not noise, in the ears of host communities such as Mokopane. It is a promissory note, originally adopted on the eve of the coming into force of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002 as a mechanism for correcting the wrongs of the past. It was negotiated in a tripartite process involving the government, labour and industry representatives. But then and now, the process excluded communities as stakeholders in the negotiation process. It speaks of transformation, redress, nondiscrimination, transformation ownership and control by the majority and the nonexclusion of blacks. If this was the music, why then all the noise about the revised Mining Ch...
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