Creating shared value: Lessons from a good neighbour approach to mining

South Africa’s mining sector sits at the intersection of immense opportunity and deep social complexity. For decades, communities living alongside mines have carried the weight of poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation, and fractured relations with mining companies. These tensions—rooted in history, policy, and uneven development—continue to challenge the country’s efforts to build social cohesion and unlock shared prosperity.

The Wits School of Governance (WSG), together with the Minerals Council South Africa, the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership – Africa, the Institute for Social Dialogue, and Sibanye-Stillwater, convened a landmark dialogue to explore a different way of doing things: a Good Neighbour Approach.

The event that took place on 6 November 2025 at the Donald Gordon Auditorium, brought global expertise to local challenges, featuring keynote insights from Sarah Zuzulock, Principal Environmental Engineer from Montana, USA. Zuzulock, a leading voice on the Good Neighbour Agreement (GNA)—a pioneering, legally binding contract between a mining company and its local communities that has shaped responsible mining in the United States since 2000.

Unlike traditional compliance-driven frameworks, the GNA requires open communication, transparency, and mutual accountability between mining companies and communities. It goes beyond regulatory obligations: the agreement sets higher standards for environmental management and dispute resolution, and most importantly creates a structure where communities have a meaningful voice.

Speakers also included: 

• Opening remarks: Professor Themba Maseko, Head of the Wits School of Governance

• Setting the scene: Tebello Chabana, Senior Executive: Public Affairs and Transformation Minerals Council South Africa
• Keynote address: Sarah Zuzulock, Principal Environmental Engineer at Zuzulock Environmental Services

• Panel discussion, Chaired by Thabisile Phumo, Sibanye-Stillwater EVP Stakeholder Relations joined by:

  Associate Professor William Gumede, Chairperson of the Institute for Social Dialogue

  Professor Richard Calland, Director for University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership - Africa

  Dr Andile Sangqu, Chairman of the Board of Transnet SOC Ltd

   

  Event summary:

   

  Watch the full event: