April 14, 2026 — South Africa's Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources recently clarified that the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) rules in the mining sector would undergo their fifth revision since 2002. Existing mining rights would be subject to the "once empowered, always empowered" principle for their lifetime, meaning that once an enterprise completed black equity empowerment, it would not need to repeat the process during the validity period of its mining rights. However, when an enterprise applied for the renewal or extension of mining rights, it must ensure that the black shareholding ratio was no less than 26%, and if necessary, a new BEE transaction must be undertaken.