JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa is Anglo American's best performing mining jurisdiction, Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani said last night, when he chided South Africans for not giving themselves the credit they deserved when it came to transformation already achieved.

Cutifani described South Africa as “a wonderful country” and said it remained Anglo's most important location.

“We’re making almost 50% of our earnings from our businesses in South Africa. We’re proud of our roots, our heritage,” he said in an address to journalists at a year-end media function attended by Mining Weekly Online.

Narrating an incident in which he was confronted by a shareholder about Anglo’s “South African problem”, he recalled how he stopped the conversation, and requested the shareholder to define what he meant by “the South African problem”, given that South Africa is Anglo’s best performing global jurisdiction with margins of 30% to 40% and returns of 20% to 30%.

While South Africa’s navigation of transformation had been bumpy and was not yet where it needed to be, its progress outstripped everything he had seen in his 40 years of mining.

At President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent investment conference, Anglo committed to ongoing investment.

“We also said to the President on the last day of the conference that we were already working on next year’s contribution and what we could do to improve our contribution on an ongoing basis.

“While we still have questions on the Mining Charter, we’re overwhelmingly positive about the changes that have been made so far, and we’ve made the commitment to the Minister to continue to engage and hopefully be able to resolve the issues without relying on the courts.

“But at the same time, we acknowledge the rights of certain individuals that probably are in a different position to where we are with our mining rights… and we would hope to play a constructive part in resolving those differences.

“If we can help in any way, with the work on Eskom, or the work in any other institution, we would certainly be keen to understand how we could make a contribution.

“We’ve got to be careful, too, as a company, as we all should be, that this doesn’t come across as being arrogant. We’re not suggesting that we know better than anyone else in the community. What we’re saying is that as an organisation with more than 70 000 employees in the country, we have a broad skills base that from our perspective should be available to a national project in making a difference in society.

“When we talk about the future that we’re trying to create, it’s more than simply digging a hole and producing a product and employing people. We hope to be considered as partners in communities and that’s really a big change that we’ve tried to think through and improve on in the last 20 odd years or so,” Cutifani said.

Anglo has an entrepreneurship programme that is targeting the creation of 10 000 new jobs. It is working on collaborative development in Limpopo province, where it is looking at ways of helping communities achieve what they want to achieve as a community, whether that be helping communities create new opportunities beyond mining in other commercial ventures that require, for example, drinking water or energy or roads and infrastructure that covers the consequence of mining activities.

“What we can do as a consequence of being in the community is something that we’re exploring and learning as we go, and trying to create new partnerships across the community and with governments in every sector,” Cutifani said.

He envisaged Anglo’s skills contributing to skills development within communities.

“From a strategic point of view, it's a different positioning point. It’s about creating a new future, both as a company and in particular with our communities and ultimately about the difference we can make in terms of South Africa,” he said.

In the next 25 years of South Africa’s democracy, he would like to think that Anglo could make a real difference.

“What we’re doing is not perfect. However, it’s better to be a 'diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one'. In terms of South Africa, it’s not yet perfect, but it has been a wonderful journey and we should celebrate the progress and the successes that we’ve had and really debate and argue on the issues that we need to deal with over the next 25 years. It has been a tremendous success story when one looks at the progress other countries have made over the same period of time.

“Massive uncertainty, all sorts of issues everywhere, but South Africa’s progress is still almost second to none in terms of improving the lives of people and, yes, there are lots of challenges today.

“We need to reflect on what’s good and what’s happened and throw our weight behind the President and his team, and everyone else who's trying to make a difference, and grow forward.

“Yes, we’ve had some difficult issues in the past few years, but I really do sense there’s a determination to correct those issues as we go forward.

"We feel privileged to be given the opportunity to continue to work and be citizens of South Africa. That’s not a privilege that we under estimate or take as a given. We know we have to continue to work hard to build trust and make the contribution that we should be making to help all South Africans have a better life.

“And when we talk about our thoughts in the business, it’s about re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives. If you look at the South African Constitution, it’s about improving the lives of all South Africans and there are many similarities in the preamble to the Constitution and what we’re trying to do as a company. We've borrowed some of that thinking in putting together our thoughts in terms of our purpose,” he said.

Looking globally, Cutifani said mining drove 45% of the world’s economy, contributing 10% to global gross domestic product, another 10% to service and support industries, as well as an array of key products to the construction, energy and agriculture industries.

“Without agriculture and mining, the world as we know it cannot survive. In fact, agriculture’s productivity is doubled through the products that mining produces. So, we believe that if mining is not the most important industry on the face of the planet, it’s right up there with the top two or three,” Cutifani added.