Johannesburg - A COMPANY co-owned by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe’s long-time partner, Gugu Mtshali, is taking its fight for a R150 billion stake in a Northern Cape iron ore mine to the Constitutional Court.
Imperial Crown Trading (ICT) 289 and Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu have filed papers at the Constitutional Court, asking it to set aside Pretoria High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgments giving Kumba Iron Ore subsidiary Sishen Iron Ore Company (SIOC) full rights to one of the largest iron ore mines in the world.
At stake for ICT is a 21.4 percent share of the mining right, which is conservatively expected to produce a net profit of R150bn over the next 30 years for its owners, according to the company’s papers filed at the Constitutional Court.
Kumba is a subsidiary of mining giant Anglo American and counts the state-owned Industrial Development Corporation among its shareholders.
It exports iron ore to customers around the globe including China, Japan, Korea, a number of European countries and the Middle East.
ICT owners include Mtshali, Archie Luhlabo, Mojalefa Mbete, Zebo Tshethlo and Jagdish Pareck’s Pragat Investments, which owns 50 percent of the company.
ICT chief executive Phemelo Sehunelo, also a shareholder in the company, is a former municipal manager in Kimberley.
The company says SIOC got a windfall in the form of a valuable 21.4 percent share in the right and that the Constitutional Court’s decision is not only of importance to the parties involved but also the mining industry at large. “ICT has reasonable prospects of success,” the company says of its application.
ICT says the matter is important to the “large pool of persons who were previously excluded and who would otherwise be denied access to lucrative mineral and petroleum resources of this country”.
The company acquired the 21.4 percent undivided share when ArcelorMittal SA failed to convert its old order mining right.
As a result, it lapsed at the end of April 2009.
“The immense public interest in ensuring that the mineral rights in one of the largest iron ore mines in the world are accessible to all the people of South Africa itself sufficiently justifies granting leave to appeal,” ICT argues in its court papers.
“As the state’s answering affidavit in the review proceedings graphically demonstrates, the continued monopoly in that right is not in the public interest.”
It says the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act’s transformative objectives will not be achieved without lifting the “SCA’s effective moratorium on allocating mining rights in relation to the Sishen mine to historically disadvantaged individuals”.
In her papers, Shabangu asks: “What happens to lapsed shares in mineral rights: whether they inure, felicitously, to the benefit of incumbent (eg SIOC) or entrants (eg ICT or any other entity) in the mining sector? The question is not limited to the mining sector, however. It applies equally to all sectors, especially sectors which (like the mining industry) have previously been closed to all but a few South Africans.”
ICT lawyer Ronnie Mendelow said the matter would be heard on September 3. “SIOC was never granted 100 percent of the prospecting right and it was not entitled to ICT’s 21.4 percent,” he said.
Mendelow said the 21.4 percent was correctly granted to ICT.
He added that ICT stood by its complaint against prosecutor Glynis Breytenbach, who he said did not conduct herself properly.
Breytenbach approached the Labour Court in Braamfontein two weeks ago to be reinstated in her job and prevent the National Prosecuting Authority from removing her from her position as regional head of the specialised crimes unit in Pretoria.
On Friday, her case was dismissed. Breytenbach was suspended in April last year for allegedly failing to act impartially when investigating the mining rights dispute, due to “improper relations” with SIOC’s lawyer, Mike Hellens.
SIOC accuses ICT of copying its application while ICT says SIOC unlawfully accessed its application after lodged it. Breytenbach was the prosecutor before in the criminal case involving the lucrative mining right before her suspension.
A Kumba Iron Ore spokesperson said the company did not believe that the effect of the SCA ruling was to restrict the transformation agenda stipulated in the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA).
“The SCA ruling related to a very specific factual and legal situation,” the spokesperson said, adding that SIOC has fully embraced the transformation imperative stipulated by the MPRDA.
Shabangu’s spokesman, Trevor Hattingh, said the matter was subject to legal processes which must not be hindered by speculation.
Sunday Independent