Introduction

A 2010 Citigroup report identified South Africa as the world's richest country - possessing mineral reserves worth $2.5 thousand billion. South Africa's copious reserves in platinum, gold, diamonds, base metals and coal, coupled with its high level of technical and production expertise, have made its mining sector the fifth largest in the world. It is against this background that a South African company, Agri SA, asked the South African Supreme Court of Appeal to decide that the State expropriated all mineral rights in South Africa through the entry into force of the Mineral and ...