20100913
africanews

PRETORIA (Reuters) - Whites still dominate South Africa's mining industry, and changes to include more blacks in the sector are slow despite a decade of affirmative action, Minerals Resources Minister Susan Shabangu said on Monday.

Shabangu, releasing the country's long-awaited new mining charter, said only 8.9 percent of mines were owned by blacks in 2009, well below a target of 15 percent.

"The racial ownership pattern of mining assets has remained largely unchanged," Shabangu said.

The government will maintain a target for 26 percent black ownership of mines by 2014, according to the new charter.

The charter is an agreement overseeing the industry, which requires mining companies to sell a portion of their ownership to black people in a bid to reverse decades of exclusion under white apartheid rule.

The biggest change in the revised charter was that non-compliance now could lead to mining licences being revoked and other legal penalties.

Sandile Nogxina, Minerals Resources Director-General, told reporters that the mining charter formed an integral part of a mining licence.

"The most far reaching change is that non-compliance with the revised mining charter will amount to a breach of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act resulting in the suspension or cancellation of licences granted under the act," prominent law firm Webber Wentzel said in a statement.