TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The likelihood of South Africa’s mines being nationalised is “very close to zero”, former AngloGold Ashanti CEO Bobby Godsell said in an interview on Wednesday, the day before African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema, who had championed the measure, was suspended for five years.

“One can’t in life say something is impossible, but as someone who’s spent my whole life in mining, I don’t lose any sleep whatsoever,” he told Mining Weekly Online in Toronto.

Malema had for the past two years been campaigning for the State to nationalise the country’s mining industry without paying compensation, but Godsell believed this would not fly.

“For it to be in any way feasible on the Youth League terms, we would have to amend our Bill of Rights, and that requires a 75% majority in our Parliament,” he said.

The ruling ANC fell shy of a two-thirds majority in the last national elections, held in April 2009. Opposition parties have also repeatedly slammed the ANCYL's calls for nationalisation.

Godsell also said the ANCYL wanted for the State and communities to see greater benefit from mining, which was a "common cry around the world”.

“I think the anger of the ANCYL and Malema is broader than the mines, it’s because political enfranchisement hasn’t yet brought economic liberation. I think it’s a good anger, and we as South Africans have to listen to it and find solutions,” he commented.

Godsell was speaking after giving a presentation at a Canada-South Africa Chamber of Business dinner.

An ANC disciplinary committee suspended Malema and other ANCYL leaders on Thursday for sowing division in the party. Malema said he will appeal within two weeks.

UNCERTAIN TIMES

In his speech, Godsell warned that the world's economy was "very, very uncertain" and that the last time he had been so afraid was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

He raised questions over whether the eurozone would emerge from the current malaise intact, and with a single currency, while asking if a 6% growth rate in China would be enough to maintain social and political stability.

Leaders in the country have tightened monetary policy over the past few months in efforts to rein in rampant inflation, with the side effect of slowing GDP growth, which has averaged around 10% each year for the past ten years.

The world, and particularly developed countries, may face two decades of lower growth and a decline in living standards, Godsell said – pointing out that the last time the world found itself in a similar situation, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler climbed to power.

It was not all doom and gloom, though.

Africa as a continent held promise as it had a rapidly growing middle class, and the continent was finally starting to develop much needed infrastructure, such as ports, railways and roads. Godsell, who sits on South Africa's National Planning Commission, compared the current situation on the continent with what occured in China 20 years back.

Moving specifically to South Africa, he said the population was projected to climb nearly 20% over the next two decades to 60-million, with a large portion of people being of working age, which put the country in a "virtuous position".

By contrast, most developed countries, such as Canada and the US, faced declining populations as the baby boomer generation aged.

To conclude, Godsell said that, in an deeply uncertain world, Africa offered invstors a "lesser and different risk" compared with most developed nations.