AmaranthCX and its technology partner 1Map have collaborated to publish a comprehensive, online South African Mining Map, with electronic, all commodity depiction.

Other mining jurisdictions, including neighbouring African States, provide this information to attract valuable mining investment – but not so South Africa, which is still taking steps to procure a cadastre.

AmaranthCX founder and director Paul Miller displayed South Africa’s sizeable remaining mining opportunities – plus the huge opportunity loss suffered by this country – in a Zoom interview with Mining Weekly. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video, in which Miller displays his layered map and reveals mining opportunities second to none.)

His map goes a long way towards filling the hugely unfortunate information vacuum that has been in place since the introduction of South Africa’s mining and prospecting rights legislative framework in 2004.

The denial of transparency has cut off vitally needed economic growth and jobs – and cries out for immediate reform.

“We don't nearly have enough publicly available information. We live in a constitutional state that requires transparency from our government, but we get the exact opposite,” said Miller, who has painstakingly had to determine who has what, where, for what commodity and for how long.

The map shows farms underlaying prospecting rights or mining rights, and all the basic functionality that one would expect in a competently regulated mining jurisdiction to be provided free through a portal by the State itself.

“We don't have that. So we've come up with the best solution we can. It has a lot of prospecting rights, a lot of mining rights, and by no means do we guarantee that it's complete because we were dependent on obscure sources of data, but we think it's the best we can do under the circumstances,” said Miller.

Mining Weekly: Looking at the map points to South Africa suffering a huge opportunity loss. Just how substantial is this loss?

Miller: It's dramatic. No self-respecting mining jurisdiction that is serious about attracting mining capital fails to make information available to potential investors. We have to go and find where mining companies have done specialist studies as part of their environmental impact assessments, or environmental impact assessments, for fossils, and for historical relics. We have to get those reports and back solve from that where these mining rights are. It's bizarre that that is how we have to find this information.

If the use-it-or-lose-it principle applies, why are so many rights lying dormant?

It’s certainly not use-it-or-lose-it, and the reason appears to be that if you've got a prospecting right that’s coming up for expiry after five years, and you put in your renewal application, it just sits at the department. The way the regulations are specified is that if you have applied for renewal, you can continue to prospect. When you eventually get your renewal, it might be for a limited three-year period. There are prospecting rights held for an excess of 18 years when the legal maximum is eight, so explain that to me. Without any public information being made available, nobody can check up on these things. It’s the oldest trick in the book – you have a prospecting right, you know you have to renew it, you submit your renewal application, and you know full well that you'll get no attention from the department, because they’ve got such a major backlog. Unless you push for renewal, it won't happen and then you can continue prospecting on the never-never.

Our economy has been largely built on mining, and what I see here is that development in mining is absolutely been stifled. Even though there are many possibilities, they're not being pursued.

One of the reasons we've made this available for journalists like yourself is in the hope that you will actually have a look at the map, see things and be reminded. For example, we have the mega mine gold prospecting right that was being...