Our business relies on a social licence to operate. We are under increasing pressure to ensure that the positive contribution of mining far outweighs the negative impacts, and is sustainable over the long term. Preventing and managing the negative impacts of mining, while achieving a positive societal and community impact, necessarily requires engagement and partnership with our interested and affected stakeholders.
Stakeholder engagement and inclusivity have become increasingly important in driving the initiatives that secure our social licence to operate. Our operations are bound to local communities. Our activities change the natural environment, shape the urban environment and its populations, and impact the local communities that host our workforce. We shape, rely on, and affect our mine communities in a relationship that has mutual benefits and trade-offs. In the wider historical context of South Africa’s social inequities and development challenges, the risks and challenges faced by local communities become the risks and challenges of our business.
To build thriving communities, we are resetting our relationships with community stakeholders, collaborating in regional development, ensuring land access through resettlement, sharing the economic benefits of mining, building local capacity in health and education, and expanding economic opportunity through inclusive procurement, as well as enterprise and supplier development.
To be productive, safe, responsible and sustainable, our operations must live alongside thriving communities. They are the places our people call home, our closest neighbours, and stewards of the land entrusted to us for a period of time. So we work together with local government, community leaders, and NGOs to contribute to community needs: from housing and infrastructure to healthcare, education and recreation.
That’s why in our FutureSmart MiningTM Sustainability Strategy, one of the three main pillars is to support thriving communities – alongside being a trusted corporate leader and to maintain a healthy environment.
And under the thriving communities pillar, we have set a stretch goals to 2030, including to:
- Create five jobs off-site for every job on-site in the communities in which we operate
- Help targeted schools in host communities perform along the top 20% of state schools