POINT OF ORDER
TIM COHEN: Mining Charter gives short shrift to mining jobs
While different groups and institutions lock horns over a new Mining Charter, consider these crucial contradictory facts: no industry has proportionately had more equity ownership transfer to black South Africans than the mining industry. And more jobs have been lost in the mining sector than any other. Coincidence or correlation? There are lots of debates to be had about the Broad-based Black Socio-Economic Empowerment Charter, but the one that’s missing concerns employment levels. According to the Chamber of Mines, black economic empowerment (BEE) transactions since 2000 amount to about R205bn in 2014 terms. The value of meaningful economic value transfer between 2000 and 2014 was about R159bn. "I’m not aware of any other sector achieving a comparable level," says chamber CE Roger Baxter.The chamber keeps very specific statistics on employment. In 2007, 495,474 people were employed in the industry and 455,109 in 2017 — about a 10% decline. At its height in 1987, the industry emplo...
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