South Africa holds world’s manganese, and is wasting the moment

It seems that South Africa’s critical minerals strategy is failing the moment. Lucky for us, Gwede Mantashe decided to pick a fight.

It happened at the 2026 Mining Indaba, the “crucial platform for shaping the future of mining on the African continent,” where South Africa’s minerals minister accused the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) of capitulating to Washington.

Then someone asked him about manganese, a central pillar of South Africa’s critical minerals strategy, and Mantashe changed the subject to coal.

“It’s not about the DRC national interest,” he told the room. “It’s about the continental interest.”

Continental interest. From the minister whose own country ships nearly all its manganese to Asia as raw ore, with China the dominant buyer. despite calling this the core of South Africa’s critical minerals strategy.

During a closed ministerial meeting at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town on Sunday, 9 February 2026, Mantashe challenged the DRC’s critical minerals deal with the United States, arguing that it prioritised national gain over what he described as Africa’s continental interest, a characterisation he later insisted did not amount to calling the DRC a “sellout.”

DRC mining minister Louis Watum Kabamba pushed back, insisting the deal was mutually beneficial. Mantashe wasn’t having it.

The minister who doesn’t want to talk about minerals

The posturing would be bad enough on its own. But it gets worse. When asked about South Africa’s manganese strategy, Mantashe’s response was borderline dismissive. “Why should we ring-fence manganese from the other critical minerals?” he said. “What about coal?”

What about coal? South Africa holds an estimated 70% of the world’s known manganese resources, making manganese the central test of South Africa’s critical minerals strategy, according to United States Geological Survey (USGS) data.

The Kalahari Manganese Field is the biggest land-based deposit on the planet. And the minister responsible for turning that geological windfall into industrial capacity wants to talk about coal.

600 jobs, five furnaces, two still running

Transalloys, the South Africa’s last remaining manganese smelter, issued Section 189 retrenchment notices in December. About 600 jobs are at risk, many of them contractors.

An estimated 7,000 livelihoods in eMalahleni tied to the smelter’s supply chain, according to reporting by the Mercury. The company runs two of five furnaces and has been losing money for three straight years.

Transalloys has been blunt about the arithmetic. In prior reporting, its management put the processing cost at about R8,300 a ton, with Chinese competitors operating at roughly half that. When electricity is the dominant input cost, beneficiation is a slogan, not a business model.

National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) approved tariffs are the core of the problem. Transnet’s rail collapse on the Kalahari corridor compounds it, forcing ore onto trucks that eat margins already slim to begin with.

The government brokered a discounted electricity arrangement for ferrochrome smelters. No comparable relief for manganese smelting has been announced.

In the early 2000s, South Africa had the capacity to produce close to 850,000 tons of manganese alloys annually. Fastmarkets, citing the International Manganese Institute, now puts local processing at roughly 2%.

Washington showed up. Pretoria didn’t.

On 4 February 2026, Washington hosted more than 50 countries for what it terms the rather Hogwartsian Critical Minerals Ministerial. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance, and a pile of cabinet-level officials were in the room.

The US took the opportunity to announce Project Vault, a $12 billion (around R192 billion) strategic minerals stockpile backed by a $10 billion (around R160 billion) EXIM Bank loan and $2 billion (arond R32 billion) in private capital.

And, continuing the tone of the nomenclature, a new coordination platform called FORGE was launched with the intention to break China’s hold on supply chains. Eleven bilateral mineral agreements were signed. In a single day.

Guess who was NOT in the room? Hint: Angola was. The DRC, Guinea, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Zambia, all there. But the country with the world’s largest manganese endowment, South Africa, was absent.

It seems we are still paying the diplomatic price for our International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Israel, BRICS naval drills with Beijing and Moscow, and a bilateral relationship with Washington that just keeps deteriorating.

The tariffs tell the story. The US tariff regime starts with a 10% baseline and stacks country add-ons. South Africa sits at 30%, under Washington’s reciprocal tariff regime announced in April 2025. The DRC is listed at 11%. That gap is real. Washington factors in alignment. Pretoria keeps handing it reasons not to.

Then, the largest US government delegation ever sent to Mining Indaba landed in Cape Town for the 2026 Mining Indaba held from 8 – 11 February, 2026. USTDA acting director Thomas Hardy. DFC officials. The US ambassadors to Namibia and Zimbabwe. The Americans came, not to mend fences with Pretoria, but to do deals with the rest of Africa.

Continental interest starts at home

Mantashe is right about one thing. Africa is being played. Both superpowers want what the continent has, and neither is offering a fair price. The IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook documents China’s dominance across refining of most major critical minerals, with market shares exceeding 90% for rare earths and graphite.

Beijing didn’t stumble into that position. It subsidised smelting capacity, financed supply chains through Belt and Road lending, and built vertical integration across the continent while South Africa’s own processing base contracted.

Washington’s offer is different packaging. Its National Security Strategy describes Africa’s value in terms of “abundant natural resources”. FORGE and Project Vault are designed to redirect mineral flows toward US industry. Not to build or augment African processing capacity.

The Africa Finance Corporation gets this. AFC president Samaila Zubairu launched his Compendium of Africa’s Strategic Minerals at Mining Indaba with a pointed message: minerals “are not commodities for export. They are essential tools in our development.”

But you don’t defend continental interests by lecturing your neighbours while your own house is in flames. You try not to call the DRC a sellout while your last smelter bleeds jobs.

And, perhaps most fundamentally, you don’t claim mineral sovereignty while your minister, asked about the one mineral where South Africa dominates global supply, changes the subject to coal.

Strategy documents don’t process ore

South Africa released its Critical Minerals and Metals Strategy in 2025. Mantashe this week announced a “whole-of-government” approach. Trade Minister Parks Tau touted the EU-SA Clean Trade and Investment Partnership. The IDC identified 17 strategic minerals in the SADC region. Plenty of frameworks. Fun acronyms.

None of that processes a single ton of manganese in eMalahleni, which is why South Africa’s critical minerals strategy exists more on paper than in practice.

It doesn’t fix electricity pricing that drives smelters into bankruptcy. None of it explains why South Africa, holding the best hand at the critical minerals table, is absent from the room when that R192 billion in commitments are carved up.

So, here’s the thing. The world’s two largest economies are competing to secure your minerals. That doesn’t happen often. It won’t last forever. And right now, South Africa’s response is to pick fights with the DRC, change the subject to coal, and keep shipping raw rock to whoever will take it.

That’s no strategy, sir. It’s a yard sale.