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By Trevor Neethling
Business Day, Johannesburg, South Africa
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=175516
Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has upped the ante in the African
National Congress' controversial
plans for mining, telling
African policy makers yesterday that it was
time to "take control" of Africa's mineral wealth.
Ms Dlamini-Zuma's fighting talk at a conference of the
Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) also came as Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders were
due to meet in Pretoria to discuss
lobbying to get her elected as chairwoman of the African Union (AU) on July 17.
Ms Dlamini-Zuma's comments were part of the growing endorsement by senior members
of the ANC for greater state involvement
in mining, and came a day
after three major global
ratings agencies said the
plan was a threat to investor confidence.
"We should take control of our natural resources. We should beneficiate
and also ensure that we do get
sufficient benefit from these mineral
resources," Ms Dlamini-Zuma
told delegates. "At the moment, the company doing the extraction, (the) beneficiation,
gets the resources and gets the financial benefit while the countries and
its people receive very little."
A report commissioned by the ANC and discussed
at its policy conference last week, proposed a 50% resource rent tax on mining "super
profits," along with
increased regulation, as well as price and export controls for minerals seen as "strategic."
"It's important that the wealthier partners in the
Commonwealth contribute to our
development guided by our own priorities,"
Ms Dlamini-Zuma said to general applause.
She said
African countries also needed to contain the illicit outflow of capital from the continent and use its raw-materials advantage to attract investment.
It was important to improve
transport and telecoms infrastructure to facilitate trade within the continent, she said.
"We have taken lots of decisions as the AU, but where we have failed is in the implementation of the
decision," she said in what could be read
as a swipe at AU chairman
Jean Ping, who was
running against her.
The speech was followed by an announcement by International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane at the SADC meeting that the regional body was unanimous on the appointment of
a woman to lead the AU.
"In this decade of women, from 2010 to 2020, SADC
and the southern region
are presenting again a
formidable candidate in respect to the heads of
states’ resolution to dedicate
this decade to women," she said.
African leaders will meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the latest AU summit this month.
The event was originally scheduled for
Lilongwe, Malawi, but it was
moved after Malawi refused to welcome Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, a war crimes suspect.
Mr Ping and Ms Dlamini-Zuma squared off for
the post in January, but the election
was deadlocked when neither could get the 75% majority required.
Institute for Security
Studies head Jakkie Cilliers said the CPA conference had been a chance for Ms Dlamini-Zuma
to make an impression ahead
of the AU vote and espouse ANC policy.
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