Minerals Act Regulations Chapter 2 has been around for longer than most persons currently carrying a legal appointment on a mine. It started out under the Mines and Works Act, was then adopted by the Minerals Act and, eventually, found its way into the Mine Health and Safety Act. Some of the actual legal appointments required under the regulations (like the mine overseer appointment) can be traced back to the very start of industrialised mining in South Africa in the 1880’s.
It is often said that mining health and safety law is written in blood. As hard lessons are learnt, regulations are updated. This unfortunately also means that, over time, older regulations which may have been very relevant at the time, lose their applicability and relevance.
Chapter 2, the Responsibility regulations, are unfortunately an example of this.
Some of the key issues with the legacy regulations are the following:
1. Structure of responsibility: The regulations are based on the original Mines and Works Act, where duties for were primarily given to the appointed mine manager. This made sense, as the manager was in charge. This however changed over time, with executive authority (or head office!) starting to exercise control over mining activities. The legislation however still gave the duties for compliance to the appointed manager.
Following the Leon commission, the advent of the Mine Health and Safety Act and its amendment in 1997, the main responsibilities for compliance were given to the employer (ultimately the CEO). This means there is a difference in approach between the old regulations and the new MHSA, as appointments under the Minerals Act regulations still follow the outdated approach – for example, Minerals Act Chapter 2 makes the appointed engineer (appointed by the manager) responsible for machinery and equipment, but the newer regulations under the MHSA gives the duties under the electrical and conveyor Regulations (as an example), to the employer.
2.One-size-fits-all (well, not really): The legacy regulations were drafted for the main mining sectors that were active at the time. This would have been large, conventional stoping, underground, hard rock mining operations. The Industry today however looks very different to what it looked like in the 50’s and 60’s.
Unfortunately, the legacy regulations did not specifically consider how a small surface mine with 20 employees will comply with the same requirements as a massive underground platinum or gold mining complex.
3. Competencies. It stand to reason that any set of regulations that deals with appointments and responsibilities will have to consider competencies as well. This is certainly true of the old regulations. Problem is, however, that the modern industry looks a fair bit different. The legacy regulations simply don’t address, for example, the competence for managers on surface, safety officers or shift supervisors for plants, while it is very prescriptive for mine overseers or underground managers.
4. Appointment hierarchy. The old regulations suppose a very defined hierarchy. Manager to sub-ordinate manager, to mine overseer to shift boss to 2.9.2. But what about metallurgical operations? Or surface where no mine overseer is appointed (because the only prescribed competence is an underground MO ticket)?
2.13.1 Engineers have multiple teams reporting to them but cannot make a single legal appointment, so the manager appoints 2.9.2’s etc. that functionally reports to the engineer but legally to the manager. How does that make sense on a modern mine?
5. “Mobile” appointments. The way in which legal appointment requirements for specialists (like occupational medical practitioners, hygienists etc.) have been drafted, does not distinguish between the size or complexity of mines. This means that even the smallest mining operations need to appoint what are ultimately expensive skills. So how do smaller operations cope? They appoint rock engineers, hygienists, doctors and engineers etc. on a part time basis, where appointees serve multiple mines.
This raises some concerns. On the one hand, persons are appointed where the exercise quite easily becomes one based on paper. Mandatory Codes of Practice are copy-pasted between mines and specialists spend a token amount of time on the mine without taking real ownership or understanding operational risks and culture. On the other hand, the DMPR unilaterally declares that persons may not be appointed to specific mines or more mines (even where the specialist’s service and compliance level is good) without a rational basis for the decision.
So what next? The above are but a sample of the challenges due to the legacy regulations. Fortunately, this has not gone unnoticed and work on updating the regulations to align with the modern mining landscape is underway. Sadly, it has been underway for more than 10 years…BUT the last two years have seen a renewed focus and drive.
The Mining Regulation Advisory Committee unanimously approved the draft Chapter 2 draft regulations on 7 September 2026. This is not the final step, as it still has to pass muster with the MHSC board before being presented to the Minister. As LCS, having been involved in the process over the last couple of years, we know that the new regulations are imminent. So much so that we have commenced with operational readiness audits to benchmark current operations against the requirements should the regulations come live immediately.
What will the new regulations look like? What will the impact of the new regulations be? We will share the details the closer we get to implementation, but as always, contact us with any questions.