Non-mining activities need to be promoted to mitigate
Mining issues remain pressing and Harmony Gold chief executive Graham Briggs, who attended the trade bridge, said that given that the Free State’s gold resources are limited, the imperative is to start other entrepreneurial business with people who are keen to face and overcome future challenges.
“We would like to be part of this process. We would like to start helping people, being part of collaborative efforts and leveraging from the infrastructure that exists,” said Briggs.
Sam Mashinini, MEC for economic development, said that part of developing gold mining is the rehabilitation of mine dumps. The province is turning to Germany in particular to garner knowledge on how that country has gone about re-extracting and rehabilitating its mines.
Briggs said: “Over the past five years we have spent R150-million on mine rehabilitation. We have also taken down 32 headgears and related structures. We have spent R180-million on a new facility for tailings and have R2.2-billion in trust funds to be spent on mine rehabilitation across the country, which hopefully can be spent on agricultural projects such as [creating] biofuels.
“There are certain products, such as sugar beet, which grow well in mine-impacted soil and we are already cultivating them and hope to get biofuel from them next year. The added advantage is that this [process] prevents dust from mine dumps affecting people during the windy season.”
Thabo Makweya, Chair of Promethean Investments, who was the presenter in the breakout session on mining, believes the mines and government have a lot of work to do.
“In a province with a maturing gold mining sector, provincial and local government must also get to grips with how to successfully promote non-mining economic activities as a means of mitigating the negative impact of minerals downscaling,” said Makweya.
“This requires a much more proactive approach than has historically been the case. A well-researched, strategically informed programme of work, geared to supporting minerals development and promoting the development of the non-mining economy needs to be configured and implemented.
Failure to do so will only result in further contraction of the minerals economy and the erosion of local economies that fail to diversify away from mining.
“Mining in the Free State has been dominated since the mid-twentieth century by gold mining and mining of bituminous coal,” he said.
Strategic minerals
“There is minerals development potential in limestone, bentonite, titanium, zircon, rare earths, uranium and some gold, but there are constraints to mine development and at present, the Free State mineral economy is in decline, and the province stands to lose many direct and indirect jobs as remaining gold reserves are depleted.
“However, the Free State is endowed with a number of other minerals, albeit that only a few occur at the grades and in the volumes that can sustain significant new mining activity.
“The 11 strategic minerals identified by the South African government in the Free State give rise to three distinct areas for mineralbased industrial development.”
Makweya said that the northern Free State, including Sasolburg, has areas where the ingredients for creating cement are in close proximity to each other and these are close to the major market of Johannesburg, lending potential for a Free State cement-manufacturing hub.
Mining towns such as Welkom and Virginia can look forward to becoming centres of jewellery manufacture; formal training in this field takes place at Central University of Technology (CUT) which can serve to support business incubation and in so doing, leverage the region’s gold and diamond legacy.
“There is also the potential for a Free State gassification hub, as the areas south and south-west of Bloemfontein fall into the geological zone of the Karoo formation, which is targeted for fracking. If this proves economically viable then an energy hub could potentially be established. Deep level coal beds trending from Sasolburg to east of Kroonstad and Virginia are difficult to access, but can become targets for coal gassification.