The Minerals Council South Africa and the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR) have agreed to three joint work streams aimed at freeing up stalled investment in the mining sector, Minerals Council president Paul Dunne told the annual Joburg Mining Indaba in Johannesburg on 7 October, according to Daily Maverick’s reporting of the keynote. Dunne, who is also chief executive of Northam Platinum, framed the agreement as a genuine thaw in a relationship with Minister Gwede Mantashe’s department that has been strained for years.
“The DMPR and the Minerals Council share joint accountability to ensure this process delivers the outcomes that we have committed to. There are three mining work streams agreed to with the DMPR,” Dunne said. The first targets “administrative bottlenecks affecting mining projects with the objective of unlocking more than R50 billion in capital expenditure by February 2028.” The second addresses “competitiveness gaps and a clear understanding of the reforms required to strengthen South Africa’s position as a mining destination,” a scope that includes the long-stalled Mineral Resources Development (MRD) Amendment Bill. The third commits the DMPR to a “transparent and efficient national mining cadastre” by March 2027.
Why the cadastre matters more than the headline figure
A functional mining cadastre is the register that shows the state of mining rights and geology across the country, and lets companies apply for those rights transparently. Its absence is widely seen as the main reason behind the backlog in mining and prospecting rights applications, and the lack of transparency has fuelled suspicion of corruption inside the DMPR’s regional offices, a point Daily Maverick’s reporting makes directly. The department has previously resisted the Minerals Council’s offers of help on the cadastre, including financing, so Dunne naming it as a joint work stream, reportedly to be funded in part through support staff and data capture, is a bigger signal of changed intent than the R50 billion capex figure on its own.
The MRD Amendment Bill carries its own history of friction: in May 2025, Mantashe said there would be no BEE requirement for mining exploration, a position that contradicted the draft bill at the time and became a flashpoint between the department and industry. Daily Maverick’s reporting says talks on the bill and its BEE clauses have continued quietly since, and that momentum now favours a resolution.
The market backdrop behind the reset
The détente lands as the sector’s own numbers are turning. In its latest annual report on South Africa’s mining industry, released this week, PwC said the sector “entered the 2026 reporting period on firmer footing, supported by higher precious-metal prices, improved mineral reserve positions and growing interest in critical minerals.” The report found average US dollar gold and platinum prices for the twelve months to June 2026 rose 50% and 80% respectively compared with the prior year, and said R70 billion in mining investment is currently committed and ready for implementation.
That improvement is relative, and not every part of the diversified mining sector is feeling it yet: we reported this month on Afrimat warning of a headline loss per share as its bulk commodities business hit its toughest trading conditions since 2006, a reminder that a sector-wide price recovery does not land evenly across every commodity. South Africa was once the world’s top gold producer and has since slipped behind Australia, Canada and Ghana, and years of policy uncertainty and administrative delay are the reasons the Minerals Council most often cites for that decline relative to peer mining jurisdictions. Mantashe was scheduled to deliver the Indaba’s closing address on 8 October, which both sides are treating as the next real test of whether the cooperative tone holds once the conference ends.
For businesses in mining services, logistics and the exploration-dependent junior sector, the R50 billion capex figure and the cadastre deadline are the two numbers worth tracking over the next 18 months: one measures whether bottlenecked projects actually get unblocked, and the other measures whether the single biggest administrative obstacle to new exploration gets fixed on the timeline both sides have now put their names to.
