Mining Weekly reports that the Minerals Council SA (previously known as the Chamber of Mines) on Wednesday said it was “deeply concerned and saddened” at the violence that had erupted in and around Gauteng over the course of the last few days.  

In particular, the council said the mining industry was “disturbed” at the xenophobic character of the violence.  It explained that, since the inception of the country’s mining industry, SA had “owed much of its development and growth to the contributions of non-South African citizens” to its mining operations.  In more recent decades, investments in the mining industries of numerous sub-Saharan African countries had become part of the lifeblood of many council members.  “These reasons, as well as a recognition of the impact of the instability on the country’s economy and for concern at the human costs inflicted on those targeted in this violence, are the basis of the mining industry’s distress,” the council noted.  It called on government to maximise efforts to halt the violence.  However, the council said SA also needed to “recognise that joblessness and poverty, though no justification for it, are likely to some extent at the root of some of the violence”.  Thus the government’s immediate “law and order” response must be supported by urgent economic reform that puts the country back on a reasonable growth path.

• Read the full original of the above report at Mining Weekly
• Read too, Ramaphosa says South Africa must quell attacks on foreigners, at Engineering News

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