JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa should formulate a national development strategy to promote possibilities for an alternative developmental path that promotes sustainability, but which did not have mining as its main focus.

This is one of the recommendations made by corporate watchdog the Bench Marks Foundation (BMF) in its ‘Policy Gap 6: Living in the Platinum Minefields’ report, released on Tuesday.

The report, which revisits the initial 2007 study done in the Bojanala district municipalities in the North West province, also stated that various laws pertaining to mining, such as health and safety and environmental impacts, should be amended and that tighter conflict of interest legislation had to be introduced to bar senior politicians, civil servants or their family members from serving on the boards of mining companies, or as black economic-empowerment (BEE) partners.

“Politicians becoming board members is becoming a problem,” foundation researcher and author of the report David van Wyk said in Johannesburg.

The BMF report, which reviewed Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum, Aquarius Platinum, Xstrata, Lonmin and Royal Bafokeng, stated that having politicians or civil servants and/or their family members on the boards of mining companies was undermining democracy.

“The regulatory role of government and its departments are compromised if senior figures from the ruling political party are also beneficiaries of mining. The labour, environmental, financial and social functions of the State are compromised in such a situation,” the report stated.

While the foundation supported BEE, it was disappointed that Zwelake Sisulu, Princess Zenani Mandela-Dlamini and the Malibongwe Women’s Development Agency were beneficiaries of Aquarius’ shareholding.

The BMF noted that Sisulu was closely associated with one of the leading families of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and that Mandela-Dlamni was the daughter of former President Nelson Mandela. The Malibongwe Women’s Development Agency is a project of the ANC Women’s League.

“It is very difficult not to conclude that the objectives of this empowerment project are political patronage,” the report stated.

The organisation also said that it saw little improvement in the corporate social responsibility performance of mining companies since its initial report in 2007.

"What we found again, is that the corporate social responsibility programmes by the mines are top-down, designed by experts and imposed on communities," said BMF executive director John Capel. "There is very little evidence that communities are actually consulted about their frustrations concerning the impact of mining operations on their lives. This has not changed since our last report five years ago.”

BMF chairperson Jo Sekoa added that private corporations, often with the support of government leaders, continued to make large profits while communities suffered high levels of inequality.

In the wake of the deadly inter-union clashes at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, where nine people had died over the last couple of days, the foundation warned that violent community protests could erupt as a result of the lack of education, training and employment opportunities.

“During our research, we discovered that as much as 15.1% of the population older than 20 have not received any form of schooling, while only 20.1% have completed their high school education,” added Capel.

The BMF also raised concern over the lack of planning towards the eventual closure of a mine and to the selling off of shafts to BEE juniors to avoid its environmental and social responsibilities at closure.