SOUTH AFRICAN GOLD MINERS MUST DIG DEEP TO GET BACK ON THEIR FEET
Ailing industry must invest in robotic technology to reach sources deeper underground. Gavin du Venage reports
South Africa’s ailing gold mining industry has, like a terminally ill patient, gone from denial, to acceptance, to finally putting its affairs in order as it prepares for waning production.
Gold in South Africa was first discovered in the late 1800s, and the country quickly rose to be the world’s largest producer. By the 1970s its mines were refining more than 1,000 tonnes of gold a year, more than two thirds of global production at the time. One mine alone, Durban Deep that was founded in 1896, produced more than $20 billion worth of gold before it closed in 2001.
Today, the country mines less than 140 tonnes a year, and has plunged from No 1 producer to a distant eighth in world rankings, according to the GFMS Gold Survey 2018.
The problem is not that gold is running out – the country still has an estimated 60,000 tonnes in the ground, says Alistair Macfarlane, president of the South African Institute of Mining and Metalurgy. This is more or less equal to all the gold mined in the past 140 years.
“The problem is, the gold that’s left is too deep underground, and too low a grade,” Mr Macfarlane said. Depths of below 4 kilometres underground are now common. At the same time, the trace amounts of gold per tonne of rock is also lower than in the past.
Deeper mines come at the cost of lives. Sibanye Stillwater, a gold producer that operates some of South Africa’s oldest and deepest mines has already lost 20 men this year – half the total 45 fatalities the domestic industry has suffered this year.
The answer is probably going to be new technology such as robotics for deeper ores. “Technology is needed to develop those resources below 4km,” Mr Macfarlane adds.
Work is already being done in this regard. Before 2015 little research was being done, but that year was a watershed one in recognising that the industry was in crisis. Since then government and industry have collaborated in developing new technology and new directions for the mining sector. Already the government has pledged 100 million rand (Dh25.4m) to research new technology. A modest sum, says Mr Macfarlane, “but we need to start somewhere”.
Paul Jourdan, project manager at the Mining Equipment Manufacturers of South Africa, hopes some day the country will become a major incubator of technology, for local use as well as for export.
“True modernisation will mean a net job loss, but we could transform South Africa into the preferred supplier for engineering and equipment.”
It was a South African crew using local equipment that helped to rescue trapped miners in Chile in 2010, a demonstration of the high level of technical skill the country has built up over the years. “We need to develop a cadre of competent technicians. This way we can increase market share in international equipment sales, and so grow quality jobs,” says Mr Jourdan.
Employment is a burning issue tied to mining. A recent study by the Minerals Council of South Africa showed employment decreased from 166,000 in 2007 to 112,000 in 2017, a fall of 32 per cent. By next year jobs could fall below 100,000, a figure last reached in 1910.
One way to stem the jobs haemorrhage is to recommission closed mines. A stunning 6,000 abandoned mines now dot the country, many of which could be opened again, believes Professor Steven Rupprecht at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
The trick he says will be to run these as small-scale less capital-intensive operations than is usually the case. A large mine can easily spend $100m a year in capital costs, but for a tenth of that old mines can be opened and run on a modest scale.
“There’s no reason small-scale mines can’t make good money, and they’ll help make up for larger operations shutting down,” says Prof Rupprecht.
As it happens, many of the abandoned mines are producing gold anyway – by illegal diggers who moved in using basic tools to scrape out the yellow metals.
Popularly called “Zama Zamas” [the name means “we are trying” in English] these miners will live for months at a time underground.
Unsurprisingly, casualties among Zama Zamas can be high, as they work without any legal protection including the severe safety standards that formal operations are required to adhere to.
They also fall prey to gangs who fight turf wars underground for access to the most lucrative seams; at least 70 have been killed in the past year in gang slayings, often committed hundreds of metres underground, says Pontsho Ledwaba, a lecturer at the school of mining engineering, also at Wits university.
Currently, South African law prohibits individuals from owning raw gold, and only licensed mines are allowed to extract it from the earth. Ms Ledwaba says it is time the Zama Zamas were brought in from the legal wilderness.
“Legalising informal mining will help eliminate criminal elements that dominate the sector,” she says. The Zama Zamas could also help to end another enduring problem within the mining industry – bringing in more black participation to a sector dominated by mostly white owned corporations.
“South Africa has struggled to increase black participation in mining. Legalising small scale prospecting could help distribute the benefits of mining.”