20110208
xinhua

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Nationalising South Africa's mines is "not the option", mines minister Susan Shabangu said on Tuesday in her strongest comments in a year against an idea that has unnerved investors in Africa's biggest economy.

Pressured at a mining industry conference to counter radical elements in the African National Congress (ANC) demanding state ownership of mines, Shabangu reiterated that nationalisation was "not currently policy".

But she went on to say that nationalisation would mean South Africa missing out on another global commodities boom, just as it did in 2000-08 when investment soared in the likes of China, Brazil and Indonesia but stagnated in South Africa because of policy clouds hanging over the industry.

"Is nationalisation going to give us jobs? No. We have got to make sure that we become responsible and we attract more investments, because we do need investments in South Africa," she told a news conference.

"We have a boom in the mining sector. We can't afford to miss this opportunity. We lost it the last time. It cannot happen again. I still believe, I feel very strongly, that nationalisation would not be the option for South Africa."

For years the pillar of white economic power, mining accounts for 8 percent of South African GDP and directly employs more than 500,000, but has struggled to adapt and grow since the end of white-minority apartheid rule in 1994.

In the last few months, the ANC has placed mining at the heart of plans to tackle 25 percent unemployment but most of its ideas involve more, not less, state involvement, leading to scepticism it will be able to turn the industry around.