JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – There is a chance that the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) Amendment Bill may be referred back to Parliament, Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said on Wednesday.

At a media conference at the Joburg Indaba, Ramatlhodi said in response to Mining Weekly Online that the potential for refer back had been heightened by the contention that oil and gas legislation should be separated out of the MPRDA legislative framework and accommodated within its own legislative framework.

The Minister said that he had been personally convinced by the oil and gas sector that oil and gas should have its own legal framework.

At the same time, he said that the Chamber of Mines had agreed to the MPRDA Amendment Bill in its current form and would like to see President Jacob Zuma sign the Bill into law as its stood.

The Minister said that the amendment Bill remained with the President as a result of his request that more time was needed to study it.

“We have since made representation to the President and we are sure he will make a decision very soon,” he added.

President Zuma said in response to a Parliamentary question by Opposition MP HC Schmidt that he had written to the Speaker to seek her advice regarding the demand of the Democratic Alliance that the Bill be referred back to the National Assembly to facilitate the required public involvement as laid down in the Constitution.

If the Bill should be referred back to Parliament, Ramatlhodi said it would have set timeframes to provide the mining industry with the certainty that it wanted.

All the stakeholders would be brought into the process should the legislation be referred back.

“If we’ve got a boil, we should lance it now and ensure that the framework survives the foreseeable future.

“I am saying this because I have the impression that the Bill we are talking about was not properly canvassed,” the Minister said, adding that his mandate as Minister was to defend those canvassed positions to the best of his ability while continuing to hold discussions.

He had noticed the danger of disinvestment from South Africa, which he compared to the ears of the hippo protruding out of the water but without letting on whether it was a big hippo or small hippo.

“This hippo looks like there is disinvestment in South Africa,” the Minister said.

Earlier, in delivering his opening keynote address, Ramatlhodi described the South African mining industry as the alpha and omega of the South African economy.

“It shaped our past and continues to define our future,” he said, adding that  the cost to the industry and the economy of this year’s five-month strike in the Rustenburg platinum belt had been so severe that it was beyond words.

In expressing gratitude to those who helped to find resolution to the strike, he said South Africans were a nation able to overcome the most insurmountable problems through dialogue.

“We take pride in our nation being blessed with the unique gift of being able to solve our problems through dialogue,” he said.

Those who invested in South Africa could do so in the comfort that investors had reliable partners in both the government and the unions.

The mining lekgotla contributed to labour peace and has been replaced by the revitalised mining industry growth, development and employment task team, or Migdett, which provided an ongoing platform for stakeholders to engage to deal with problems before they reached a tipping point.

The government, he said, was fully alive to investment being dependent on a regulatory policy framework as pronounced in legislation.