Community

Effective community engagement is a dynamic and evolving process and requires commitment to partnering with governments and other organisations as well. We engage meaningfully, as much as possible, with our stakeholders to ensure we better understand their perceptions of value and deliver accordingly. We have developed a stakeholder perception index which helps in identifying and addressing specific challenges, including employment, legacy issues, transparency and local procurement opportunities.

Our stakeholder engagement process is designed to respect local customs, traditions and cultures while encouraging open, honest and constructive dialogue. For further information, see our Community and Indigenous Peoples Policy Statement and Stakeholder Engagement Policy Statement.

We invest in a wide range of community programmes.

In South Africa, our efforts include building early childhood development centres near our housing facilities, providing employment and entrepreneurship training, donating obstetric ambulances to ensure that mothers-to-be have access to safe patient transport.

We invest in community training and development programmes, learnerships and portable technical and vocational skills training and education and research programmes at universities to help strengthen and empower the workforce in host communities.

Also in South Africa, we recently established a new community trust intended to enhance the impact of socio-economic projects on communities by augmenting and optimising our community development programmes. The trust will promote the use of local suppliers to unlock, create and share value in the communities.

In the US, an innovative framework called the Good Neighbors Agreement, developed in collaboration with the local environmental community, ensures that we protect the natural environment while encouraging responsible economic development. We sponsor more than US$50,000 in scholarships in Montana annually and, in 2021, spent US$400,000 in charitable contributions, focusing on community improvement activities, STEM education, rural emergency and health services and environmental stewardship.

Our aim is to ensure that host communities can sustain themselves post-mining. To this end, we endeavour to work with local government and other stakeholders to promote alternative economic programmes. In 2021, we established a social closure working group to guide our decisions on how best to help communities to transition to post-mining environments.

The Bokamoso Ba Rona Agri-Industrial Initiative, a pilot programme based on our social closure framework, is a large-scale agriculture and bio-energy project in the West Rand District Municipality, close to Sibanye-Stillwater’s mining operations. The initiative is based on a unique, collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach to promoting economic activity in areas of the greater West Rand.

The initiative is designed to facilitate the emergence of a sustainable post-mining economy through the creation of employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly in the agricultural and industrial sectors.

Partners in this initiative include the Gauteng Infrastructure Financing Agency, the Far West Rand Dolomitic Water Association, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, the Merafong City Local Municipality and the Rand West City Local Municipality. The African Development Bank has provided the grant funding for further preparation of projects under the continental Staple Crop Processing Zone programme. This work will see the conclusion of developer and funder contracts to boost the local economy in agriculture. Some R6 million was secured from Nedbank and Sibanye-Stillwater, through its SLP commitments, has earmarked R19 million for the development of various agriculture initiatives as its contribution to diversifying the regional economy and helping establish a sustainable economic development trajectory.

Sibanye-Stillwater and the Far West Rand Dolomitic Water Association have contributed approximately 45,000ha of land to the initiative.

The aims of the Bokamoso Ba Rona initiative are to:

• facilitate creation of a sustainable post-mining economy through the implementation of comprehensive sustainable local socio-economic development initiatives
• promote employment by emphasising labour-intensive opportunities with a focus on agriculture
• accelerate transformation by creating opportunities and providing ongoing development and training for local communities

The initiative is supported by the South African Public Investment Corporation.