In a wide-ranging interview with Mining Weekly's Martin Creamer recently, the Chairperson of Gold Fields Mining group, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, said South Africa was destined for greatness. She said the mining industry must take the gap and use this period where we've got a 'supportive Minister, a supportive union, to get our house in order'. She mentioned a few things, including: investing in people, promoting entrepreneurship, mopping up unemployment, and enhancing the infrastructure of the country, "because the more we get people out of shack sites, out of hostels into proper homes, the higher the quality of our infrastructure, then the world will take note".
She added that if the mining industry is seen, given the fact they already have a tripartite arrangement, and a strategic review in which the mining industry has committed to do certain things, to be improving housing, to improve skills, to improve safety, and to invest in new technology - not just to mechanise. She said the industry has got a mining charter in place and it is flexible enough to do some of the things that they have got to do.
"First of all, housing. Starting with mining industry, which in any case is obliged to re-house its workers, if they were to take advantage of that obligation, and retrain some of their workers some of whom are illiterate, and choose those who want to go into bricklaying, those who want to go into carpentry into welding and  so on, and train them by the hundreds and by the thousands". They then become part of the new workforce and by the time they finish, they don't want to go back into mining quarters. "It allows you to restructure your head count, because we need to go towards highly skilled workers with fewer people at the coal face, with more mechanisation, but we can't do that", she said.
When you've got a huge headcount with the majority of those people illiterate, you can't move them any more, she maintained. "But when they are skilled they are mobile". she said.
"Many of them will actually choose to go into entrepreneurship, again in terms of the charter entrepreneurship is one of the things that you get points for promoting".
She added that if we were to encourage small and medium entrepreneurship in this country, this would help mop up unemployment because for every entrepreneur that you have, they can employ eight to ten people and as they can grow - more people.
She also pointed out that poor productivity has to do with the fact that we have unskilled labour, unsafe practices in the mining sector, mines stopping to work with fatalities - all detracting from productivity. But with more training and more skills,  we can shift much of the headcount this can free up money for capital investment to mechanise, and those people will happily become part of your supply chain. She added the three problems of lack of productivity, unemployment and lack of skills could be put together, to create a real prosperous mining industry.
If most employers approached the challenges of turning around the mining and indeed other industries, and regard the opportunities opened up by the Mining Charter and proper application of the BEE policies, it seems many huge problems could be significantly reduced if not overcome. But why are these policies not put into practice in the very mining industry which Dr Ramphele is part of? At Gold Fields, what prevents them from leading the way and implementing the very strategies that she is promoting? Why is there so much criticism of and resistance to BEE in so many places? Are there  any other black business leaders who think like Dr Ramphele does, and if so, are their voices being heard? Which companies are leading the way in finding viable solutions? What are they doing right, and why is it not being emulated across the board? Why is corporate South Africa unable to come up with viable solutions? Is it all because of the legacy of apartheid, and if so, how can this be turned around, and at what cost? Who should lead the way? Who should follow? Is this a shared responsibility of government, labour and business - and what about civil society, where do they fit in? Would the cost be too huge to bear? What about the benefits of such bold initiatives, are we looking at them?
There are hardly any business or trade union leaders that would find fault with what is being suggested here by Mamphela Ramphele, as all or most of the agreements regulating the market in South Africa are arrived at after lengthy negotiations, which give them the force of law. The different charters in various sectors were equally the result of lengthy research, discussions and negotiations. Why is it that after so much spade work they don't seem to work? is there something essentially wrong or missing in the way South Africa does business, or tackles its challenges of develop the economy and overcoming the legacy of apartheid? Is is all because of lack of political will among all the stake holders? What does all this cost  our country in terms of human development, competitive  advantage and creating a climate of self-sufficiency and stability?
 These are the questions we intend to explore in Thuso Links in our endeavour to contribute in the search for solutions in our country.