Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, speaking on Radio 702, contradicted what he told Parliament in December when he said that none of the mining rights and related applications received in the 2023/24 financial year had been finalised.

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That is beyond dispute and a matter of public record.

But the DMRE and the minister have since been changing their story, which raises questions about the narrative they are now trying to spin. 

“We have received 2,525 applications,” Mantashe told 702. He then proceeded to break the applications down as follows: 75 mining rights, 1,596 prospecting rights and 854 mining permits – for a total of 2,525.

“We’ve processed and finalised 674 of those,” the minister said. “Six hundred and seventy-four is not nil.”

Mantashe said these were approved in the third quarter of the current financial year.

This immediately raises some questions. 

If it’s “not nil”, then why did the minister say in December that none of the applications had been finalised? Were they processed after 8 December, when his remarks were made, but before Christmas?

Or did he mislead Parliament? If so – why would you lie to make it look as if you are doing an even worse job? 

Perhaps the information Mantashe was given in December was incorrect. If so, surely heads should roll in the DMRE?

This is all speculation, of course. But when a minister and his department keep changing their story in this way, it simply invites all manner of questions. Rather than clearing things up, Mantashe and the DMRE keep muddying the waters.

Muddled numbers

The minister also contradicted what Deputy Director General Tseliso Maqubela said earlier in the week on 702:

“At that time (8 December 2023), none of those applications were finalised,” Maqubela acknowledged.

“So for those applications which had submitted their environmental authorisations, which would have been from the year before, we actually finalised for the same period — nine months — 2,041 applications,” he said.

The DMRE also said in a statement this week that it had “finalised 2,041 applications in the current financial year”.

That’s the same number the deputy director general mentioned, but he said they all related to the previous financial year. Now Mantashe has said there are 674 finalised from this financial year. Is that out of the 2,041, and was the deputy director general incorrect?

If you are paying attention to the DMRE’s story, you will see how it keeps shape-shifting:

1. First, there are 2,525 mining applications of various stripes received this financial year up until December, and the minister tells Parliament that none – or “nil” – of those has been finalised.
2. The deputy director general then says – in response to our reporting – that 2,041 applications have been finalised, but that they are from the previous financial year.
3. The DMRE then says that, yes,  2,041 applications have been finalised this financial year.
4. The minister says, no, 674 of the 2,525 received this financial year were finalised in Q3.

If you haven’t done your homework, you need to keep your story straight. But this one is as twisted as a pretzel, and it’s all as clear as a lump of coal.

It leaves the impression that the DMRE is making stuff up as it goes along.

As this correspondent has pointed out before, it highlights just how bad the DMRE is at communications and transparency, not to mention the basics of its job.

On that front, Mantashe said on 702 on Thursday that the backlog of applications – which was more than  5,000 three years ago – now stood at around 3,000. And that he aimed to have it cleared by the end of this year.

And it will be cleared because – drumroll, please – the long-awaited cadastral system will soon be announced!

A cadastral system is an online map portal that displays a country’s mineral wealth in a way that is easily accessible to the public. It also shows the state of play of mining and exploration rights and allows applications for such rights to easily be made.

In August last year, the DMRE said it had selected the preferred bidder to replace its useless Samrad system for processing applications, and an announcement was expected in October. This was being audited for final approval by the state IT agency, Sita.

That process, according to Mantashe, has now been finalised.

“Sita tried to impose a number of conditions on that… after six months, they’ve ultimately agreed that we must go ahead. So very soon we are going to be announcing the service provider for cadastral (sic). That will accelerate the pace of processing rights,” Mantashe said.

“To check a functional cadastral system, we had to go to Botswana, for example, and Namibia, and see how they use their cadastral system.”

That would be the Trimble/Spatial Dimensions product used by those countries, which is the preferred choice of the mining industry. It remains to be seen what the DMRE has chosen. 

But then, perhaps this story will also change in the coming days. With the DMRE, you never know what will be put on the record next. DM