One of the strategic mistakes miners have made is to allow their contribution to SA to be judged through the prisms of black economic empowerment and corporate social investment. Their far greater societal endowment can be read in their contribution to employment, fixed investment, exports, and tax payments – yet this story remains largely untold despite the fact that there can be no doubt the industry makes a huge contribution to the welfare of all South Africans. Miners invest very little in telling this story and this mistake is a primary reason why they have become the target of so much media and activist hostility. After all, if miners make no real contribution to the economy or to the empowerment of poor people then why should anyone care that the minister makes their lives very difficult? That hostility and the public ambivalence around it have in turn created the climate in which hostile and extortionist policy can thrive. Frans CronjeCEO, Institute of Race Relations
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