Section 52 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA), which states that the holder of a mining right is required to give notice to the Mineral Resources Minister “in the prescribed manner” in terms of downscaling of operations, is a ticking time bomb. Speaking during a plenary session on retrenchments at the twenty-ninth Labour Law Conference, in Johannesburg, Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr director and employment law national head Aadil Patel and ENSafrica executive consultant Professor Pieter le Roux agreed that the use of Section 52 was a strategy to protect employment and promote transparency, but that it could be applied in the wrong way.
