The South African ban on new mining permits may last longer than the originally planned six months. The Department of Mineral Resources had put a moratorium on new prospecting rights applications to deal with the existing applications and sort out current disputes.
The original six months were apparently not enough time for the Mining Ministry to sift through the 25,000 plus applications as per the spokesman Bheki Khumalo. He added that environmental questions made the process more complicated in the Mpumalanga region that has a high concentration of open pit coal mines.
As of now the deadline has been extended till the 31 of March 2011 for all regions barring Mpumalanga. There the moratorium will stay in place till 30 September 2011 to enable the ministry to deal with the twin challenges of mining and environment. The original six months would have ended at midnight on Monday.
The ban is not going to affect applications that the mining ministry received before the 1st of September 2010. This is a part of a review to make mining permit application process more transparent after several charges of corruption were levelled against people in position of authority.
There were many prospecting rights disputes to settle as well with more than one party apparently holding mining permits to the same site. Mines minister Susan Shabangu said that the review had uncovered a number of problems with issues such as non compliance, illegal mining, and bogus claims.