JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – At this week’s Joburg Indaba, South Africa was urged to get its many idled ferroalloy smelters working again and to replace ideology with pragmatism in mining.

Menar MD Vuslat Bayoglu called on South Africa to revive hundreds of thousands of jobs by ensuring baseload power for South Africa’s 57 idled ferrochrome furnaces, while ENS Africa COO Otsile Matlou called on government to eliminate ideology and optimise pragmatism.

Both Bayoglu and Matlou were responding to questions put to them by EY Africa energy and industry leader Wickus Botha during a Bernard Swanepoel-chaired panel discussion.

Indonesia succeeding in building 62 ferronickel smelters from scratch in a mere 11 years was cited by Bayoglu to emphasise how much quicker it should be for South Africa to receive the huge economic advantage through the revival of 57 idled ferrochrome furnaces that are on care and maintenance. “How do we incentivise the making of ferrochrome and ferromanganese in South Africa and where are we going to get the power”, Bayoglu asked, while Matlou said with regard to South Africa’s overall regulatory and policy environment: “If I were the Minister, I’d strip ideology from the conversation with mining CEOs and I’d replace ideology with pragmatism.”

Regarding critical power for smelting ferrochrome, ferromanganese and aluminium, Bayoglu advocated the public-private approach adopted by the State-owned rail-and-port enterprise Transnet: “If Eskom cannot do it because of the balance sheet, then they should allow, like Transnet does, the private sector to have a partnership.”

Regarding policy pragmatism becoming the order of the day when it comes to critical minerals, Matlou commented: “For those minerals where we will get the best advantage by going East, we must go East. And for those minerals where we can get the best advantage by going West, we must go West. And in the context of the dynamics of the Africa region, start thinking about what the continent needs and what capacity is there to start consuming some of the minerals on the continent itself.”

Bayoglu, in noting world geopolitical shifts, cautioned that South Africa should avoid becoming part of another country's agenda. Instead, it should establish its own agenda that acknowledges its importance to other countries.

Matlou, in promoting pragmatism-over-ideology still further, included this: “The work we've done basically showed us three things. Number one is that geopolitics is not about ideology. The old times of the East and the West, the Cold War, capitalism and communism, simply are unsophisticated to understand today's global economics.

“Number two, mineral criticality is not what the market outside of South Africa tells us that it is. We've got to define our own basket of criticality, taking advantage of what's happening around the world, and making sure we place our products where they’ll have the best return for us.

“Number three, we have to leave sufficient criticality in the domestic market for South Africa to start developing and building its own economy.”

Pointed out further by Bayoglu was that while certain smelters may need refurbishing, many would “just need small touches” to get them back into wealth-creating and job-generating mode.