JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Lonmin tragedy could be used to undo past wrongs, Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu told Parliament on Tuesday.

Speaking during a special Parliamentary debate on the Lonmin Marikana killings, Shabangu said that working together in a spirit of collaboration and fairness with minimum recrimination would be a monument to those who had fallen at Marikana.

She urged the South African mining industry to redouble efforts to ensure better integration of social and labour plans.

“It’s clear that we’ll have to work together to tackle the many socioeconomic challenges,” she said and called for highly visibility, innovation, transparency and peer review by the near-mine communities themselves.

The industry needed to ensure that collective bargaining happened routinely in conditions of peaceful coexistence and a task team would ensure that stakeholders had a common understanding of collective bargaining, the need for security and the advantage of improved living conditions.

She urged South Africans to refuse to be cowed into accepting the notion – popular in certain circles abroad – that the country was at war with itself and pleaded for restraint in passing judgment ahead of the findings of the judicial commission of enquiry that was being set up by President Jacob Zuma.

The government cared immensely about the plight of the bereaved families and those suffering in hospital.

As a mining jurisdiction, South Africa had built into its legislation, mechanisms that ensured the transformation and growth of the industry.

The Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) placed socioeconomic responsibility on the shoulders of all mining concession holders, who were obliged to ensure an enabling environment for human-resource development, employment equity, community development and better living conditions.

The government was working to ensure Mining Charter compliance.