From resources to resilience
- Deryn Graham
South Africa is rich in natural resources from minerals to sun and wind. What must change for our natural wealth to become thriving wealth?
Since the discovery in South Africa of copper (1850s), diamonds (1867) and gold (1886) and subsequently of large coal deposits, the country’s mineral wealth has been a source of personal and corporate enrichment and a pillar of economic development. However, three decades into democracy, South Africa has yet to translate mineral wealth into shared prosperity.
Today, South Africa sits on mineral reserves valued at more than $2.5 trillion. The country consistently appears in the top 10 globally for 16 separate commodities but its failure to fulfill its potential and truly thrive as a mining nation can be attributed to two main reasons: the country remains a raw ore supplier, failing to beneficiate its own resources and maximise on their value, and huge under investment in exploration, due largely to regulatory dysfunction and policy uncertainty.
Before we can consider beneficiating our abundant deposits of traditional and ‘new’ minerals and rare earth elements – we need to know exactly what South Africa has under the earth.
According to Susan Webb, Associate Professor in the School of Geosciences, exploration has been choked over the last two decades by regulatory constraints. Geosciences mapping is under-resourced and Wits is the only university in southern Africa offering a range of degrees in the field, compared to around 120 in China. As a result, the country captures less than 1% of global mining exploration investment.
“For now, it is more viable to invest in exploration elsewhere in Africa than in South Africa. We are limited by, amongst other aspects, a lack of policy and regulation in the use of technology such as drones for research and exploration. We also have a skills base of postgraduates that could become involved in research but we are unable to deploy them effectively,” says Webb.
Dr Kenneth Creamer, Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics and Finance notes that when mineral rights were transferred to the state in the early 2000s with the intention of promoting increased levels of mineral exploration, paradoxically, activity largely dried up due to regulatory uncertainties and the failure to put in place essential planning and management tools such as an effective mining cadastre.
Beyond our colonial legacy
The approval by cabinet in May 2025 of the Critical Minerals and Metals Strategy and the adoption of the Integrated Resource Plan 2025, together with a new mining cadastre, represent the country’s most ambitious attempt yet to move beyond its colonial legacy as an extractive economy.
The Critical Minerals Strategy targets six pillars, focusing on exploration promotion, beneficiation and industrialisation, infrastructure development, skills and innovation, environmental stewardship, and regional integration. The vision includes developing local battery manufacturing capabilities, establishing green hydrogen production facilities and creating integrated mineral processing hubs.
Creamer believes that to achieve this vision and to develop manufacturing capacity, the country needs to restore its electricity abundance and take advantage of the country’s location in the world’s sun belt.
“From having one of the cheapest sources of electricity in the world, thanks to the rich coal seams which drove the industrialisation of the 19th and 20th centuries, South Africa has for the past twenty years experienced an unstable, unreliable and expensive supply to homes and businesses,” he says.
Millions of jobs in renewable energy and related manufacturing could be created with appropriate strategic interventions. Creamer and Webb both emphasise that a lack of political will, more than technical or financial constraints is the primary barrier to unlocking the country’s mineral potential. Without appropriate strategic interventions, mineral producers like South Africa could remain trapped as raw ore suppliers while most value-added manufacturing happens elsewhere. The Critical Minerals and Metals Strategy offers some hope as it promises regulatory reform that actually works, infrastructure investment at scale, targeted exploration incentives and skills development for the future economy.
"South Africa has hundreds of years of wealth and job opportunities locked underground," says Webb. The question is whether the country has the political will to free them – or whether its $2.5 trillion mineral endowment will remain exactly that – potential trapped underground while other nations build the technologies of the future.”
- Deryn Graham is a freelance writer.
- This article first appeared in?CURIOS.TY,?a research magazine produced by?Wits Communications?and the?Research Office.
- Read more in the 20thissue, themed #Thrive, which explores what it truly means to flourish — across a lifespan, within communities, and on and with our planet.