platinum mining news, page-3

The feathers are flying over Amplats announcements for restructuring...according to my searches of google news.

Picking out points to consider only, because online info may not be exact or fact etc...

heres a point i noted from the general publics comments made to the article link below..

"A licence to mine, mineral rights and ownership of a mine are all separate legal entities"

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-18-00-amplats-mines-belong-to-the-nation

OK ...Several groups/people etc can hold mineral rights, but only one can be awarded mining/prospecting rights...

and ownership of a mine is a separate legal entity?
Is that correct? how does that work? is it always so?

just trying to sort this idea out and match it to the beng case and what is being negotiated...
I think Beng and Rustenburg Platinum may have had mineral rights but werent awarded prospecting rights .( for differing reasons) or maybe Rustenburg P had an old order rights with conditions and/or a commercial agreement re the mineral rights/license/etc./? names change with legislation or department,imo.
Genorah also had mineral rights..from where/who? and were awarded the prospecting rights...maybe a condition of an old mining right of some-ones or something else?

Anyway they got the green light in the form of a prospecting right ...and raised the money by dealing with Ausralian based asx listed cos.

B mount their court case...and Anglo/ARM go for PAJA via the Rustenburg Platinum holdings.Remember in news article a B spokes person said they wrote a letter to Anglo severing their agreement around 2004-6??

What conditions , holdings, agreements, terms, were made along the way are secret/undisclosed and just what is legally recognised seems a bit unclear however G has the MINING RIGHTs to a few farms.
To me mineral rights seem worthless if the mining right has been allocated to someone else.

I'll quote that again
"A licence to mine, mineral rights and ownership of a mine are all separate legal entities"

Are G looking for a mine owner? not just a manager?
and negotiating a deal for all stakeholders?

and does that point about separate legal entities have some bearing on why we NKP SHs dont get informed?