{"id":11742,"date":"2018-08-16T19:24:54","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T19:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11742"},"modified":"2018-08-16T19:24:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T19:24:54","slug":"what-is-the-future-of-south-africas-mining-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11742","title":{"rendered":"What is the future of South Africa&#8217;s mining sector?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article-body\" readability=\"86.0526315789\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/south-africa.html\">South Africa<\/a> has some of the world&#8217;s biggest reserves of platinum, gold, iron ore and coal.<\/p>\n<p>But mining now makes up less than seven percent of its economic output, a steep fall from 20 percent in the 1970s.<\/p>\n<p>Mining companies are blaming low prices and soaring production costs for their plans to cut thousands of jobs at a time the country is struggling with high unemployment rates.<\/p>\n<p>Mining is also intertwined with race relations in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The people who work deep underground in often dangerous conditions are overwhelmingly black, while the executives overseeing them are mainly white.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the firms have pushed back against government plans to make them bring on more black shareholders.<\/p>\n<p>So, is it a losing battle for the mining sector? And can South Africa move away from its dependence on commodities?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Presenter:<\/strong> Mohammed Jamjoom<\/p>\n<p><strong>Guests:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lebohang Pheko &#8211; senior research fellow at Trade Collective<\/p>\n<p>Moleko Phakedi &#8211; deputy general secretary at South African Federation of Trade Unions<\/p>\n<p>Ralph Mathekga &#8211; researcher and lecturer at the University of the Western Cape<\/p>\n<p><span>Source:<\/span>\u00a0<span>Al Jazeera News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa has some of the world&#8217;s biggest reserves of platinum, gold, iron ore and coal. But mining now makes up less than seven percent of its economic output, a steep fall from 20 percent in the 1970s. Mining companies are blaming low prices and soaring production costs for their plans to cut thousands of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}