“The only worry and the risk that goes with the judgment is that I suspect that within the next ten years the right to issue licenses is systematically shifting from government to communities and if we do that there will be no mining. With the attitude to mining in South Africa, within the next 20 to 30 years mining will be banned in this country. Mining is being treated like a curse rather than a blessing. It is not treated as a wealth, it is treated as more of a negative. It is a polluter, it is a depravation and all that. That worries me a great deal because the mining we have, we are endowed with it naturally. We should just be forced to mine responsibly – to remove the right to mine and replace it with every other right, we will not have mining,” Mantashe said.
