It's great to see new blood on the JSE in the form of new junior mining listings, and even better to see that it's not blood on the trading floor - well, not a lot at this stage, depending on whether you bought Wesizwe Platinum too early.

Since late last year four new mining and/or exploration companies - Tawana Diamonds, Wesizwe Platinum, Eland Platinum and Wits Gold - have listed. The bourse has not seen that kind of junior mining activity since the mid-1980s.

A fifth company, Diamond Core Resources, has carried out a successful fundraising exercise to rejuvenate itself and set about developing three new potential diamond mines. A sixth, Teal Resources (the exploration division of Patrice Motsepe's ARM group), established a secondary listing on the JSE after initially listing in Toronto.

These listings begin to address a glaring deficiency that has been a feature of the JSE for 20 or so years.

Junior mining companies have traditionally never been that popular in SA, for a number of reasons. Chief among these was the domination of the industry by the large mining houses and the extent of their control over mineral rights. The majors effectively sterilised large tracts of ground which may have contained viable deposits, but they had their hands full developing better-quality deposits elsewhere. Despite this, they would not sell off mineral rights they were not exploiting. That changed with SA's new mining legislation, which vested ownership of mineral rights in the state and introduced the "use it or lose it" concept. The best example of the benefits of that approach is Wits Gold, which has astounded investors with the appreciation in its share price since it listed in April.

Wits Gold raised most of its funds privately last year at R6/share. It placed a further 400 000 shares at R20 each to achieve the spread of shareholders required for its JSE listing in April. The shares have since traded from a low of R44 to a high of R92.

The company is the brainchild of "gold bug" and former Harmony chairman Adam Fleming, who set about acquiring mineral rights to a string of deep-level deposits adjacent to the Potchefstroom, Klerksdorp and Free State gold fields.

The previous owners - Harmony, AngloGold Ashanti and Gold Fields - let them go for no consideration other than the right to "claw back" a 40% participation in any mine that may be developed from the rights. They did this because they were about to lose the rights anyway. These would have reverted to the state because likely development was so far in the future.

That's why the jump in the Wits Gold share price was so surprising. Wits Gold claims to control an enormous deposit of 142m oz but the bulk of it sits at depths of between 4 000 m and 5 000 m - though MD Marc Watchorn likes to stress that 20% of it is shallower and located at depths down to 2 500 m.

It's going to take a gold price of at least R250 000/kg - compared with the current level of R140 000/kg - to make exploitation of gold at 4 km viable. Building a new mine to get at that gold will require billions of rand, and backers would have to wait at least seven years before they see a return on their money.

The new legislation also has drawbacks, reflected in the continuing uncertainty with which many foreign mining companies view SA. That in turn is reflected in the number of junior mining companies operating in SA, but listed on the London, Toronto or Australian stock exchanges, where it is easier to raise funds than in Johannesburg.

The point has been driven home at the last two "mining indabas" - the popular name for the important investment conference in Cape Town each February.

Developments in SA badly lag the global boom in mining, as explorers and junior miners pile into countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and Eritrea, which until recently were no-go zones.

There are fundamental geological reasons for this. SA is better explored than any other African country and its geology hosts the massive ore bodies that only a major company can develop.

But there should still be a lot more junior activity here. Foreign mining companies are happy to use SA's excellent infrastructure as an operating springboard into the rest of the continent, but they are far less keen on exploring and mining here.

Not only is there vagueness over the legal requirements on critical issues such as BEE, the industry has yet to find out the terms of the proposed royalty bill, and the details of what government wants to achieve through its campaign to increase beneficiation of minerals. Diamond companies look particularly exposed here.

Yet Wolf Marx, MD of Australian diamond junior Tawana Resources, which established a dual listing on the JSE in November, said at the time: "When you look at what we have found over a few years in the Kimberley region, where exploration has been taking place for 150 years, it's amazing." Marx believes there's plenty of scope for more discoveries and he's also not that worried about provisions of the Diamond Amendment Act.

Newly appointed De Beers MD Gareth Penny agrees with him, but Penny may well be putting a brave face on a situation in which the giant diamond group has come under severe political pressure in SA, Botswana and Namibia to radically change its business model.

Penny says of De Beers' new approach: "We will be more politically and commercially aligned . . . it's the right thing to do economically. We are pleased that it is commercially beneficial and it is obviously hugely helpful in terms of Southern African development."

De Beers announced its long-awaited BEE deal in November last year. The launch was attended by outgoing minerals & energy minister Lindiwe Hendricks, who said pointedly in her speech that the chosen BEE partner - Ponahalo Investments, headed by former Northern Cape premier Manne Dipico - "is not made up of the usual suspects". That was seen as confirmation of government pressure on companies to broaden the base of their BEE deals away from established black businessmen like Motsepe, Tokyo Sexwale and Mzi Khumalo.

Sexwale's Mvelaphanda Resources (Mvela) was originally believed to be a top contender to be De Beers' BEE partner, but it's since been confirmed that Mvela was ruled out because of government pressure to avoid "the usual suspects".

The political pressure on BEE was made even more obvious at a joint Samda/department of minerals & energy workshop in April to clarify problems with converting "old order" mineral rights to "new order" rights.

Deputy minister of minerals & energy Lulu Xingwana (who is to assume a new portfolio) attacked the mining companies, accusing them of "daylight robbery" of some BEE partners and threatened to re-examine BEE deals already passed by her department.

Mining industry players believe government's approach is far too focused on its social agenda, and does not pay enough attention to the commercial and economic realities of doing business in the country.