Motsepe says partnerships boosting South Africa’s mining sector

South Africa has regained competitiveness in mining because of partnerships between the public and private sector to tackle regulatory issues and structural bottlenecks, according to billionaire Patrice Motsepe.

Policy uncertainty together with vandalism, power outages and logistics bottlenecks have weighed on South Africa’s mining industry for more than a decade. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government partnered with business groups including B4SA to address the nation’s sub-standard transport and energy infrastructure and operations.

“They’ve done very well over the last few years in ensuring” South Africa becomes a destination for investments, Motsepe said at the sidelines of a conference in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. “Part of what should take place in those partnerships is for the CEOs of the mining industry to keep telling the government what are the changes, the improvements and the areas that will ensure that South Africa is a globally competitive destination.”

The end of rotational blackouts and improvement in transport logistics have put South Africa in a better place to capitalize on higher commodity prices. Johannesburg’s industrial metals and mining gauge has climbed 30% this year, compared with just a 2.4% increase in the benchmark FTSE/JSE All Share Index.

Still, South Africa’s investment in mineral exploration dropped for a seventh straight year, despite the government’s ambitions to arrest the decline.

Exploration spending in South Africa fell 5.3% to 738 million rand ($44.8 million) in 2025, according to data published in March by the government’s statistics agency using 2015 constant prices. Investment in prospecting has slumped more than 85% in the past three decades, the data show.

Motsepe, South Africa’s wealthiest Black person who made his fortune in gold mining in the 1990s and 2000s, said his company plans to invest several billion dollars in the country’s mining sector, without providing any time line.

His African Rainbow Minerals Ltd. has interests in coal, iron ore and platinum group metals. The firm also owns 10% of Harmony Gold Mining Co., a top producer of the precious metal in his home nation.

Motsepe is the South African president’s brother-in-law.

(By Prinesha Naidoo and Jennifer Zabasajja)