The National Union of Mineworkers has shifted slightly in the debate on the nationalisation of mines.

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The largest union in the Cosatu fold, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), has shifted slightly on the debate about the nationalisation of the mines, now appearing to back a 50/50 ownership model, similar to what exists between De Beers and the Botswana and Namibian governments.

Senzeni Zokwana, the NUM president, has questioned the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) call for the nationalisation of the mines to the extent that it declared in August that it did not support wholesale or blanket nationalisation.

However, Zokwana said in an interview with City Press that a favoured model would be 50/50 ownership, down from the 50 percent plus one share stake previously favoured by the union in its recent policy document.

ANCYL president Julius Malema has been seeking a 60 percent state ownership stake and a 40 percent private ownership stake in new mines.

An NUM source said Zokwana, who was attending a Cosatu leaders’ meeting this week, was concerned about an entity that was supposedly owned by everyone, but ended up being owned and controlled by no-one – if there was full-scale state ownership.

The source said the union was concerned about the management of existing state-controlled enterprises, including SAA, the SABC, Transnet and Eskom, which were suffering from various management “illnesses”. He suggested that there needed to be “joint responsibilities” created by public-private partnerships.

Zokwana said that the models followed by Botswana and Namibia were good examples, where the state partnered with mining companies to reap the benefits of mineral wealth.

He said outright nationalisation could damage the R2 trillion local mining sector and result in severe job losses. – Business Report