BusinessLive reports that the legal challenge to remove all mining charters gazetted after the first charter was “definitely going ahead”, the lawyer behind the action, Hulme Scholes, has advised.
Scholes, who has a long history in SA's mining law, argues that the underlying Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act allowed only one iteration of the Mining Charter, which was the first one implemented in 2004. Scholes, who brought the challenge three years ago, is waiting for the Minerals Council SA (MCSA) to submit an affidavit in the case or present arguments against the challenge. “We are waiting for the Minerals Council to file its affidavit to either confirm the challenges we brought against the charter or to put their own view before the court. We are definitely going ahead with this,” Scholes said. He explained that he had excluded the first charter from his challenge and was seeking to set aside the second two charters gazetted in 2010 and 2018, because the minister had acted beyond the powers granted in the act. The third charter upped the black ownership element of the underlying requirements to securing mining and prospecting licences to 30% from 26% and demanded refreshed empowerment deals for any sales or transfers of mining rights — something the MCSA has given notice it will challenge in court.
- Read the full original of the above report by Allan Seccombe at BusinessLive
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