Untying the Gordian Knot: unintended consequences of water policy for the gold mining industry in South Africa

Gold was central to the South African state from the outset. Its revenues sustained the pariah apartheid regime after 1961 in the face of economic sanctions and military spending. At that time, a regulatory regime arose that blurred the distance needed between regulator and regulatee. Water-related liabilities such as acid mine drainage were nationalized, burdening the post-1994 democratic government. Legal reform has sought to internalize those historic externalities through the application of the greenfields logic of global best practice. The unintended consequence is disinvestment, thereby hastening the nationalizing of all remaining liability. A new approach is needed.