He made the comments at a mining conference in Limpopo yesterday, a week after the High Court ruled in favour of the Minerals Council South Africa's challenge to the 2018 charter.

The court deemed the charter policy, not legislation, and removed or set aside challenged aspects, including the need for miners to top up black economic empowerment shareholdings to 30% and meet procurement targets of 70% of goods and 80% of services from BEE enterprises.

"We need to ensure that the mining industry in South Africa gets transformed," Mantashe tweeted from the Limpopo Mining Investment Conference yesterday.

"[The] mining charter remains a regulatory instrument premised on achieving the dream of transformation that would set the country on a path to inclusive growth and development."

He told the conference entrepreneurship should be encouraged to deal with the challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Small-scale miners needed to be supported, "so that people establish themselves and build wealth", he said.

New mining hubs

Mantashe's department had identified the North West, Northern Cape and Limpopo as areas where mining could see exponential growth without taking away the contributions of other provinces, the minister told the conference.

"We can see that Limpopo has a lot of potential to produce and be a great mining hub," he said at the event.

He wanted to see miners' head offices and processing plants move to these provinces and not operate from Gauteng.

South Africa's economy was likely to contract in the third quarter after deadly riots, looting and arson erupted in July and weighed on activity in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province and the commercial hub of Gauteng - the two biggest provinces by contribution to GDP, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.