After apartheid, mining has left communities around mines even more destitute
A new social compact is needed to overcome the worst excesses of the elite capture of the sector
Mining is a useful microcosm of the political economy of SA and provides us with a fault line along which to explore what went wrong and how we could overcome the many challenges we face as a country.
Colonial and apartheid SA used the abundant mineral resources of the country to enrich a small elite and used the power of the state to legislate and enforce draconian laws to dispossess the majority. The end of apartheid was meant to usher in a new dispensation of equality and development. Sadly, the reality of the present has more continuity with the past than it does with the objectives set out in our constitution...
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