Digging a little deeper & some thouhts.....Before i give my commentary, just an off topic issue i want to address here. It seems that Stockhouse deemed it neccessary to remove one of my post because of my opinions or criticisms of certain aspect of Africa or African society, specifically sub-saharan, with regards to Deep South's situation in Namibia. Not exactly sure why they've censored it, but by catering or giving in to a segment of our society that cultishly believes that you cannot criticize anyone or anything even though it is historically and factually correct, you are walking a very fine line & dangerous path. It seems that folks like Mr. Tree and his god awful ilk think the world is equal in EVERY respect and should be treated as such REGARDLESS of what history has shown or taught us including what is factually true. Therefore, any arguments or opinions counter to this philosophy are fit to be canceled. I wonder where i've seen this type of behavior before?
If this is the route Stockhouse has chosen to take, then i'll warn them in advance that this is a very perilous path to walk down, rife with some unintended future consequences. Imo, Stockhouse was never a place to shutdown down ANY rational conversation at any point in it's multi decade existance, especially one that was based on reasonable facts. It's the reason i made it my PRIMARY home for so many years for ANY financial discussion or exchange of ideas with other like minded investors. If going down the Youtube, Twitter and Facebook censorship rabbit hole is their preferred choice now, then maybe we will have to find a new home to make our contribtutions.
Regardless of what happens here, i WILL NOT be deterred in my beliefs and what the facts state. Africa is DEFINITELY NO North America or even close to being on the same level as ANY European country or successful Asian nation. It's a chaotic meesed up sh*thole that has NEVER made ANY significant contribution to world history and continues to be so despite the TRILLIONS of $$$ pumped into the continent over the last 100 years by the rest of the world economies. There are certain things that you cannot change no matter how much time, energy and resources you pump into and/or how much a CERTAIN very liberal portion of our population would like it to. There is no Wakanda folks, never has been and there will never be one, despite what agenda global Liberal Gov't have or what these crazy SJW folks are trying to push. Only in fairy tales can you change a frog into a mighty Prince or a simple pumpkin into a lavish carriage.
Now that's out of the way, on to more important & relevant things for investors here. First, i want to make clear that i WAS NOT very familiar with this company before BUT had seen its name pop up a few times over the years because of their relationship with Teck AND them being in the mining sector for so long. I was fully aware they had an asset in Africa somewhere and that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of them. I've been investing in this sector for 30+ years and usually AVOID making investments in companies with assets in very volatile, politically unstable suspect places like Africa, the Middle East, around the Stans, and certain parts of South America.
There are reasons why 99% of these assets, however attractive some might be, are trading a steep discount to similiar deposits in stable jurisdictions. As Deep South's unexpected turn of events has shown us and other similar situations too numerous to name throughout the many past decades. For those who don't know what im talking about, i'll defer to Mr. Tree to fill you in, as i'm sure he has some valuable input to give. For the rest of you that do understand what i'm saying, i'm certain some of you most likely experienced this and probably haven't forgotten. I think Mr. Friedland would have a lot to say on this matter as he was hit with lightening twice.
So digging a little deeper into this unfortunate situation, i've come to the following realization. At first, i thought it was a simple case of demanding kickbacks or stuffed enevolpes and some form of bribery the company didn't want to enage in. At first, this is exactly what it looked like from the surface, but imo it's A LOT worse than this and goes way beyond just some simple kickbacks to retain their permits. I think what is occurring here is outright nationalization of the asset by the Namibian Gov't by means of ludicrous & unfounded legalities. EVERYTHING points in that direction and makes absolute sense when one looks at all the facts around this situation. With rising commodity prices, especially copper, and making every viable copper deposit VERY valuable in this new eletrification paradigm shift, it was bound to happen to some in these very unstable jurisdictions. This FACT along with the FACT that Namibia just declared most mineral deposits (copper as well) as "strategic reserves" earlier this year, was just a bomb waiting to be dropped on some poor unfortunate miner.
Now there are quite a few skeptics out there and some that blame company failures for their precarious situation and MAY even defend the Namibian Gov't. They say that Namibia isn't the only one who's implemented a "strategic reserve" policy for their country, other nations have done as well. To this, i offer this argument. They are correct, many nations including, the US, China, Canada and a few others have all declared many minerals as "strategic reserves" and have installed some laws to prevent shortages in their own country. The problem here is that NONE of the other nations have begun to cancel or remove permits and outright boot out companies that are legally operating in their country by using dumb legalites to try to nationalize the asset. Abosutely NONE and this is the difference. In addition, all the above mentioned countries except Namibia actually NEED those minerals because they produce goods for themselves and rest of the world. Namibia does not produce ANYTHING and does not export ANY finished goods to anywhere.
Another defense they use is the company being totally responible for their situation. Failures on the company's behalf by not conforming to agreed contracts or not informing the Gov't of their status regarding the asset. If anyone actually does a bit of due diligencence around this dossier and looks deeply at what occurred, any sane, logical reasonable person would NOT blame the company for its unfortunate predicament. These guys have been in this area for OVER a decade! Let me repeat this for over 10 years! Even though the property was only acquired about five years ago by DSM, their relationship with Teck and the competent folks including the techincal & legal expertise around them is undeniable. They knew what they were getting themselves into AND the challenges they were facing from both the property itself and politically unstable nature of Africa. Regardless that Namibia was considered by them and others as the gold standard of African friendly mining jurisdictions. They took nothing for granted and KNEW exactly what the situation was. If you think this company and it's mgmt was not dotting their i's and crossing their t's at EVERY step here, then you are truly an ignorant investor and/or have ulterior motives to see the downfall of the company.
There is A LOT more to this story than what investors are being told or the real circumstances surrounding this event. As this post is already too long and as i have more to say on this, i will end it here and continue with more facts, opinions & perspective another time. Including how Canada's Prime Minister's antics & agenda made small Canadian mining operations vunerable around the world, especially third world like Africa vunerable to the situation currently facing Deep South in Namibia. So if you've found this to be an informative post and has helped you understand better to make more informed investment decisions, please upvote this post so i may gauge the sentiment here. If you could downvote this, i would encourage this as well. The reason i'm asking this for this board is to see if most investors here find my opinons valuable, enjoy the commentary and if i should spend time or energy to continue posting my views. If not, i will hand over the reigns to folks like Mr. Tree (as i'm sure he has a valid contribtion to make....at some point 8) as i concentrate my time on the numerous other boards i post on. The choice is yours.
Good luck & God speed