The PwC's latest mining figures and global inequality reports should prompt a fundamental re-evaluation of mineral wealth distribution. High corporate profits can't justify an extractive status quo that deepens wealth concentration while leaving mining-affected communities excluded and impoverished.

This week, Daily Maverick reported on the improving relationship between the Minerals Council South Africa and the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, with new work streams aimed at unlocking investment, addressing "competitiveness gaps" and ensuring what industry regards as a successful outcome to the Mineral Resources Development Amendment Bill.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the government and the mining industry talking to one another, nor with South Africa trying to improve infrastructure, fix its licensing system or attract investment. The concern lies elsewhere.

South Africa should be worried that a period of extraordinary profitability is once again being treated as evidence that we need to accelerate and deepen essentially the same model of extraction that has already helped produce one of the most unequal societies in the world.

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Who benefits in SA from mineral profitability?

The latest PwC SA Mine 2026 report should therefore be read not simply as a good-news story about mining recovery, but as an invitation to ask a much more fundamental question: what has decades of mineral profitability actually produced for South Africa, and for whom?

Among the major mining companies tracked by PwC, revenue increased from R569-billion to R786-billion in a...