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Ramaphosa commissioned an inequality report he intends to ignore From extraction to exit Nowhere is this contradiction more visible than in the mining sector, where deregulation has evolved into a kind of managed abandonment. As global giants such as Anglo American reconfigure their portfolios and merge abroad, the state looks on as a bystander. The proposed merger between Anglo and Canada’s Teck Resources, slated for shareholder votes in December, is not just a corporate event; it is a test of SA’s economic sovereignty. If completed, the deal will entrench Anglo’s identity as a global conglomerate headquartered in Canada, not an SA industrial citizen. The G20 report warns precisely against this trend: the global mobility of capital that “allows firms to extract wealth without accountability”. And yet SA has done little to resist it. Our laws still allow companies to delist, redomicile or spin off assets abroad without accounting for the social and fiscal footprints they leave behind. When Anglo shifted its primary listing to London in 1999 it justified the move as necessary for global competitiveness. Two decades later the result is clear: global profits are up, local responsibility is down. Between 2021 and 2024, Anglo’s tax and royalty payments to the SA government fell from R41bn to R7.8bn, an 80% drop, even as its after-tax profits soared. This is not an accident of markets; it’s the design of policy. Policy by deregulation For years SA leaders have spoken about “modernising” mining law. What they mean, in practice, is deregulating in the name of reform. The proposed amendments to the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) offer investors faster approvals and reduced environmental compliance. Social labour plans (SLPs), already routinely violated, will become even less enforceable. It is a strange sight: a government commissioning a global study on inequality while doing everything it warns against. It is exactly this pattern of deregulation that Stiglitz and his co-authors identify as the engine of global inequality: “Rules regulating businesses changed in many countries, reducing states’ ability to curb monopoly power and tending to enforce the legal primacy of returns to shareholders above the rights of other stakeholders.” SA’s mining sector is a textbook example. While profits have multiplied, from roughly R5bn in 1980 to R270bn in 2023, employment has collapsed from 760,000 workers in the 1980s to fewer than 480,000 today. Yet the state persists with a kind of market theology: that what is good for investors must be good for the country. It is the same logic that underpins the Treasury’s reluctance to raise corporate taxes or tighten capital controls, despite chronic fiscal shortfalls. The Stiglitz report calls this “the politics of shareholder supremacy”. In SA, it’s official policy. The capture of the state by the market Ramaphosa’s government has perfected a new form of regulatory capture: not merely bribery or corruption, but ideological capture, the internalisation of market logic as national destiny. The department of mineral and petroleum resources, tasked with upholding constitutional principles of equitable resource use, has become an enabler of corporate convenience. The SA Human Rights Commission’s 2018 mining inquiry found “systemic failures” in enforcing environmental and social obligations. Seven years later, those findings remain unimplemented. Instead, we are told that the priority is “regulatory certainty”, code for a stable environment for profit extraction. This is the tragedy of the democratic state: that it inherited the economic structure of apartheid and learnt to administer it politely. A global mirror The G20 report places this pattern in global perspective. It links the current concentration of wealth directly to colonial modes of extraction, noting that “many colonies’ economies were structured so raw materials could be extracted at the lowest cost”. SA’s mining economy, designed under colonialism and perfected under apartheid, remains trapped in that architecture. When Anglo American unbundles, it’s not merely a corporate restructuring; it’s the logical conclusion of a century-long project to globalise profit and localise harm. SA has become a case study in how political liberation without economic transformation preserves the status quo. The G20 economists call it “financial colonialism by consent”, where developing countries sign away their policy space in pursuit of foreign investment. Ramaphosa’s administration appears to have taken that lesson to heart. From loosening exchange controls to diluting environmental oversight, SA has become a case study in how political liberation without economic transformation preserves the status quo. The silence of the PIC Perhaps the most damning silence is that of the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), custodian of many South Africans’ pensions and one of Anglo’s largest shareholders. In theory the PIC exists to safeguard public value. In practice, it has become an absentee landlord in the mining debate. While Anglo plots its global future, the PIC has offered no comment on whether it supports the merger, whether it has sought assurances on domestic reinvestment, or whether it has insisted on accountability for mine rehabilitation and job losses. As the G20 report reminds us, inequality persists not only because of what elites do but because of what public institutions fail to do. The PIC’s silence is A government at cross purposes It is hard to escape the irony: the same administration that commissioned a global report warning against unfettered capital mobility and deregulation is fast-tracking both at home. Ramaphosa lauds the language of inclusion while his ministers dismantle the tools needed to achieve it. The report’s authors, Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty and others, argue for stronger taxation of multinational profits, tighter regulation of capital flows and renewed state capacity to deliver public goods. Meanwhile, SA is liberalising its exchange controls, shrinking its public sector and inviting foreign miners to self-regulate. We are, quite literally, doing everything the report says not to do. Mining for justice There is an alternative. Parliament could legislate a public interest exit test, requiring any mining company that seeks to merge, delist or relocate offshore to first account for its social, fiscal and environmental footprint. The department could integrate free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) — already law in Canada and British Columbia and other mining jurisdictions — into our mining framework. The PIC could use its shareholder power to demand transparency and fair taxation. These are not radical ideas; they are mainstream international standards. What is radical is the persistence of a government that preaches inclusion while practising extraction. The politics of hypocrisy Stiglitz warned at the G20 launch that inequality was not an economic inevitability but a political decision. That is the uncomfortable truth Ramaphosa must confront: SA’s inequality is not a mystery of the market; it is a product of the policy choices his government continues to make. To commission a global inequality report while enabling the very practices it condemns is more than irony; it is hypocrisy elevated to governance. Unless we change course, SA will remain the world’s most unequal democracy. Not by accident, but by design. https://www.businessday.co.za/opinion/2025-11-19-christopher-rutledge-ramaphosa-commissioned-an-inequality-report-he-intends-to-ignore/ Back • Rutledge is executive director of the Macua-Wamua Advice Office. |
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