PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has been urged to establish a presidential commission to conduct a forensic investigation into how people's mineral rights were "recklessly given away" after 2004.

The recommendation is contained in a report of the ANC task team appointed to advise on whether nationalisation of mines or other forms of state intervention could be implemented in South Africa.

The task team report, which was handed to the ANC national executive committee meeting at the weekend for discussion, argues that the mineral rights conversion process - during which the state became a custodian of all minerals rights - was "fraught with irregularities".

The recommendations place Zuma in a predicament since one of the highly criticised mining deals involves his son, Duduzane, and his Gupta associates. They are shareholders in an Imperial Crown Trading, which attempted in vain to gain mining rights in Sishen. Judge Ray Zondo has since nullified the deal.

The irregularities and reckless parcelling of mining rights happened after the Minerals and Petroleum Development Act - which made the state custodians of all mineral resources - was signed into law.

In terms of the law private holders of mining rights were obliged to apply to the Department of Mineral Resources to continue holding those rights. Failure to apply, or if the application were declined, the minerals were deemed to be state-owned assets.

The state could allocate them to other successful applicants.

The report says the manner in which the government handled the process - giving away the country's "known resources" - to new owners without tendering has cost the country jobs.

"The wholesale handing out of our nation's known unexploited mineral assets, probably cost South Africa several hundred thousand jobs," the report says.

The ANC task team, which proposed a number of ways in which the government could manage mineral resources assets, wants the investigation that will "carry out a forensic audit on the granting of all new order rights" to submit its report to the president within six months of establishment.

This the report says will help reclaim at least some of the people's mineral assets that were recklessly given away.

Those who invested in the assets in good faith should be given a free share following the auctioning.

"Where such rights were improperly awarded, they should be suspended but where the concessionaire had nevertheless made significant investments in good faith, they should be given a commensurate free carry right in the consequent auction of the asset ... ," the report states.

It further reveals that the old order unexploited properties that were held privately by many apartheid era companies to keep out competition, were in effect private exploration rights with well known resources.

The ANC NEC was tasked by the national general council of 2010 to put together a report for consideration at national policy on how government can intervene on mineral sector with the purpose of creating jobs.

The report was put together by Pundy Pillay, a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, independent researcher Paul Jordaan and Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu of the Human Sciences Research Council.

They visited a dozen mining countries, including Botswana, Australia, Finland, China, Malaysia, Norway, Chile, Venezuela and Brazil.