* Whites continue to dominate top management
* Little progress after a decade of affirmative action
(Adds background, details)
PRETORIA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Whites still dominate South Africa's mining industry, and changes to include more blacks in the sector are slow despite a decade of affirmative action, Minerals Resources Minister Susan Shabangu said on Monday.
Shabangu, releasing the country's long-awaited new mining charter, said only 8.9 percent of mines were owned by blacks in 2009, well below a target of 15 percent.
"The racial ownership pattern of mining assets has remained largely unchanged," Shabangu said.
The government will maintain a target for 26 percent black ownership of mines by 2014, according to the new charter -- an agreement overseeing the industry which requires mining companies to sell a portion of their ownership to black people and to reverse decades of exclusion under white apartheid rule.
The new charter is aimed at speeding up black ownership, skills development, employment equity, procurement, housing and mining beneficiation.
The slow progress in transforming the mining industry to include more black ownership is seen fuelling demands by the ruling African National Congress's youth wing for all mining companies to be nationalised.
Shabangu said top management and technical posts in the mining sector continued to be filled by whites who earn more than their black counterparts.
"After 10 years of affirmative action being adopted as policy, progress on diversification of management and core-skilled workers remains minimal," she said.
Under the new charter, South African mining groups will procure 70 percent of services and 50 percent of consumer goods from black-led companies by 2014.
Sandile Nogxina, Minerals Resources Director-General, told reporters that the mining charter was an integral part of a mining licence.
If companies did not comply with the charter, the licence could be revoked in addition to other penalties provided for in mining laws, Nogxina said.
The new charter showed the mining industry had agreed to allow black investors to have voting rights and also to seek greater access from banks for black people to get funds for investments in mining. (Reporting by Shapi Shacinda; Editing by Marius Bosch and Sue Thomas)