he ANC Youth League's mines nationalisation circus: dying like a rat.

JOHANNESBURG - The "debate" on nationalisation of South Africa's mines reached a fresh low point this week, when the ANC Youth League tossed barrels of verbal poison at Sipho Nkosi, the outgoing president of the Chamber of Mines, whose CEO, Zoli Diliza reacted to an ANCYL statement by in turn stating: "The contribution that the League makes to sensible and enlightened debate on issues of national importance is lamentable and is consistently characterised by a crude proclivity to descend into abusive and intimidatory rhetoric".

Indeed. While ANCYL president Julius Malema has long specialised in gratuitous ad hominem insults, the "nationalisation" debate lingers. The topic has been placed on some kind of an agenda for some kind of an ANC meeting in 2012.

In its prelisting statement this week, black-controlled Royal Bafokeng Platinum (which joins the Johannesburg bourse on Monday) noted that "a faction of the ruling political party in South Africa, the youth league of the African National Congress, has recently called for the nationalisation of all mines in South Africa. The government of South Africa has publicly stated, in response to these calls, that there is no present intention to consider nationalisation or to change the existing government policy on this issue in the short, medium or long term".

About 99% of the babble that the ANCYL hurled in Nkosi's direction does not bear repetition anywhere, given that the reader would have to then immediately go for a heavy bath or shower. A few sentences may escape toilet classification, and can be examined for possible evidence of vanilla insanity. According to itself, the ANCYL "has made public many case studies of countries that have greatly succeeded with nationalisation across the world".

It seems that pride of place for the vagabond ANCYL goes to a thing that does no mining at all, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which was, indeed, nationalised for the first time in 1976. This year the unhinged El Presidente, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, has been seen expropriating whenever he falls into deep depression or experiences indigestion; it's been anything from iron and aluminium plants to transportation firms and food retailers. Elected in February 1999, and survivor of a coup d'état in 2002, Chávez "re-nationalised" PDVSA after a crippling December 2002 to February 2003 strike.

Since nationalisation, Venezuela's oil output has steadily fallen; the country recently accepted a $20bn loan from China, to recapitalise the oil sector. Venezuela is the most unstable country in South America, and amongst the most disturbed in the world. There is negative economic "growth". The country harbours one of the highest murder rates on the planet. The inflation rate is amongst the highest anywhere, and the country's multi-tier currency system has collapsed into the sewers.

The ANC youth hooligans then mentioned Chile's state-owned Codelco, the world's biggest copper producer. A useful touch on reality was recently related by the London-based The Economist newspaper, which noted that during the 2009 election campaign, Sebastián Piñera, who became Chile's president in March, often criticised Codelco, "for its inefficiency, griping over its stagnant output and climbing costs".

Codelco was nationalised in 1971. Today it still mines over a tenth of the world's copper, but (due mainly to a phenomenon known as the private sector) has seen its share of Chile's output dwindle from 75% in 1990 to 32% last year. "We need to create a new Codelco," Mr Piñera told The Economist. So much for the nationalisation of Codelco.

"It needs funds, new organisation and new management." He favours its partial listing on the stockmarket. Diego Hernández, a former manager at BHP Billiton, the world's biggest diversified resources company, is Codelco's new chief executive. "His priority" says The Economist, "is to implement a proposed five-year $15bn investment plan, including a new mine and the expansion of El Teniente and Chuquicamata".

The crazed ANCYL also said it has "made mention of other case-studies, such as Norway, Botswana and Namibia, and gave scientific evidence on why nationalised mines in Zambia could not succeed". As in Venezuela, the case of Norway has lots to do with oil (which has a very different profile globally to mining) and little to do with mines nationalisation; aluminium maker Norsk Hydro is a listed company, whose biggest cost input, electricity, benefits from state-owned hydroelectric facilities in Norway.

Most of Norsk Hydro's baseline material input, bauxite, is mined in Brazil, Jamaica, and Australia, rather than Norway. The Norwegian government holds directly and indirectly about half the issued shares in Norsk Hydro. "The state", states Norsk Hydro, "has never taken an active role in the day-to-day management of Hydro and has for several decades not disposed of any of the ordinary shares owned by it, except when participating in the share buyback programmes".

Botswana and Namibia have little, if anything to do with nationalisation, and lots to do with public-private-partnerships (PPPs). In both cases, De Beers, the world's biggest miner, by value, of diamonds, for more than a century, has managed diamond mines in both countries, in which the governments have material stakes.

The ANCYL claims to have "scientific evidence on why nationalised mines in Zambia could not succeed". South Africa aside, Africa's history of nationalisation is sad and tragic. Substantial mining sectors that had sprung up elsewhere across the continent during colonial times started going down after independence, which started up around 50 years ago. Mines were ruined beyond recognition; many looked like abject metal scrap yards.

But a few special cases stand out. In 1972, the Ghanaian government seized a 55% stake in all mines across the country, and control, with a single exception. London-based Lonrho retained an equity stake in Ashanti Goldfields, owner of Obuasi, Ghana's biggest gold mine. Lonrho remained, by and large, in control of day-to-day operations.

At the time of the 1994 London re-listing (the first one was back in 1897) in London, the government privatised Ashanti Goldfields by selling 25% of its holding, reducing its equity stake to 30%. Ashanti Goldfields later merged into AngloGold Ashanti, one of the world's biggest gold diggers.

By the early 1990s, all other gold mines in Ghana had been comprehensively trashed and run into the ground; the economy as a whole was ruined. In both Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, huge and once-profitable mines on the central African copperbelt were reduced to junkyards, some of which could be seen from outer space. Ghana was the first to privatise, setting a heavy trend across the continent. Today, Zambia's copper miners are thriving, following the pioneering re-privatisation footsteps taken by First Quantum in the mid-1990s.

In Katanga Province, DRC, there have been fairly strong headwinds from a small elite of hustlers located inside and outside the country. But the private sector, resilient as ever, marches on. Phoenix, AZ-based Freeport McMoRan, the world's biggest publicly traded copper miner, has built a $2bn copper-cobalt mine in Katanga, at Tenke Fungurume. The twin deposits could support a mine four or more times bigger than the first phase.

The ANCYL's heavy intellectuals appear to be conveniently ignorant of several current events that leave notions of mines nationalisation bleeding at every extremity. Coal India, the world's biggest coal producer (with about 400 000 employees) is listing, signalling the first stage of privatisation. Petrobras, in which the Brazilian government holds a handy stake, but which is independently managed, recently raised $70bn from private investors: Petrobras is listed. The event ranks as the biggest single capital raising in the history of world stock markets.