New-era gold diggers cash in on the late show at Top Star
THERE’s a new gold rush in Johannesburg and the quest to extract some 11 million ounces of the hidden metal is transforming the city’s skyline.
Giant mine dumps, like the one on which the Top Star drive-in cinema once stood, are systematically being bulldozed as mining companies transport the dumps to the outskirts of the city.
Our mine dumps are literally landing up in areas like Brakpan.
Hundreds of Johannesburg’s mine dumps, made up of waste products from early mining operations, are being flattened in a new wave of gold mining.
Unlike costly deep-level mining — which requires thousands of workers and keeping the mines cool, ventilated and safe — mining the dumps is generally cheaper.
The old Top Star, built atop a 50m mine dump in the inner city, has yielded some 2.7 tons of the precious metal since 2008.
Another massive mine dump that sat along the M2 highway in City Deep has also been flattened and three others have made way for Chinese shopping centres in Edgardale, south of the city.
Around the Langlaagte area, near the site of the discovery of the largest gold field on earth, several mine dumps are now being mined again.
DRDGold, which has rights to recover more than 800 million tons of material contained in many of the dumps across the central Witwatersrand, estimated these tailings to contain more than 11 million ounces of gold.
This equates to around 343.7 tons of gold. As the world’s fifthlargest producer of the precious metal, South Africa produces about 190 tons a year.
As the dumps disappear from the skyline, the new waste gets deposited in massive “superdumps” near Nasrec along the N1 highway, southwest of the city, and in Brakpan on the East Rand.
Sally Gaule, senior lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, who hosted a photographic exhibition titled Stardust in 2012 about the flattening of Top Star, said the Brakpan superdump that housed the remains of the former drive-in dump was now “measuring 23km around the bottom”. Gaule said this week that the site was expected to rise by 30m above its present height.
James Duncan, the spokesman for DRDGold, said it was possible at some point, if metallurgical technology could be further advanced, to extract residual gold in
Almost half of Joburg’s mine dumps had been removed in the past 20 years
even the tailings contained at the Brakpan complex.
But, he said, successfully mining these dumps also depended on the gold price and the grade of the material in the dumps.
“Another important factor is whether or not DRDGold is successful with ongoing research and development to find ways of extracting more of the gold from the dumps at a cost that still yields an acceptable margin or profit.”
Duncan said the company, which has been mining the dumps for 30 years, had recovered 122 tons over this time.
Heritage bodies were initially opposed to destroying the dumps, arguing that they were an important part of the city’s history.
Flo Bird of the Parktown and Westcliff Heritage Trust said the mine dumps were “familiar landmarks” and important symbols in the City of Gold. “I hope we could just protect just one of these mine dumps at least,” she said.
Mining geology expert Morris Viljoen, a former Wits professor and now technical director at mining company Bushveld Minerals, said almost half of Johannesburg’s mine dumps had been removed in the past 20 years.
Viljoen said the mining and removal of these dumps helped remove sources of acid mine drainage.
Dumps such as the one on which the Top Star drive-in used to sit, had large deposits of gold because they were “hard rock” tailings, which were waste from the early days of gold mining in Johannesburg, when gold recovery wasn’t as advanced as it is now.
DRDGold, which made a “fortune” out of the Top Star dump, is now rehabilitating that land.