The scrum and the pit: What rugby and mining can learn from each other
This is a blog—by a bloke—about rugby and mining. I can already hear you groaning about how predictable that is; fridge-magnet worthy “leadership lessons” from one male-dominated environment to another. Read on, though, and you might be surprised, just as I was two weeks ago in Cape Town.
By Rohitesh Dhawan, President & CEO, ICMM.
ICMM and Standard Chartered hosted a conversation with industry and stakeholder executives on leadership with Siya Kolisi, the captain of the double World Cup-winning South African Springbok rugby side. We deliberately didn’t say much about how the discussion was going to go, and so most arrived that morning expecting a conversation about how to set goals for your team, motivate them when the chips are down, and perform under pressure. Basically, what you expect a 6’4” rugby player to talk about when he’s not tackling the opposition.
Instead, Siya talked about finding his mother’s teeth on the dusty playground, knocked out of her mouth by the men who abused her. About how many never saw the beauty in his mother and aunts’ faces because they had been disfigured by repeated beatings. And how unresolved trauma and the inability to process painful emotions in a deeply divided and structurally unequal society were some of the root causes that perpetuated the cycle of gender-based violence.
Many ICMM members have very significant programmes to tackle gender-based violence in their workplaces and communities and left the room with an even deeper resolve to eliminate this scourge from our societies. Siya’s words and call to action for the mining industry to double down in helping improve the lives of the communities we work in will long be remembered.
A few days earlier, we’d released our latest Tax Contribution Report – a breakdown of the economic and social contributions that our members make to local communities and national economies. This yearly disclosure marks one of my proudest moments as it shows how our industry changes lives and makes progress possible – in 2024, that amounted to $42 billion in Corporate Income Tax and Royalties paid by ICMM member companies, which represents over 40 cents of every dollar made in profit returned to host communities.
Hearing Siya talk about his childhood put a human face to the importance of those numbers. Having not eaten for 2 days, his grandmother would beg and borrow a spoonful of sugar to give him the only “meal” that would fuel him for rugby training: a glass of sugary water. With food scarce, clothes were an unimaginable luxury – so Siya would play games of competitive schoolboy rugby in his underpants! It is heartening to know that millions of people might escape Siya’s circumstances and worse thanks to the jobs, infrastructure and public services that ICMM members’ activities make possible.
One of the abiding lessons from Siya’s success with the Springboks was the importance he attached to shared leadership. The acceptance that as individuals, we don’t have all the answers, but if we pursue a common purpose whole-heartedly, success is within our grasp. This is the spirit behind the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative – a coming together with our partners at the World Gold Council, Copper Mark and Mining Association of Canada to create a common standard for responsible mining. Something that we couldn’t necessarily deliver at scale on our own, but as a shared endeavour, can enable huge progress for the common good.
Mining and rugby, then. Two vocations that both leave you covered in mud and can deliver for local communities and host countries in different ways. A masterclass in resilience and dignity encapsulated in one of South Africa’s modern heroes.
