Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: Global political uncertainty has resulted in gold investments rocketing 44% in the last three months.

Creamer: The World Gold Council (WGC) calculation show that in the three months to September 30 the investment side of gold, investors going into exchange traded funds, actually rose 44%.

This is all around this uncertainty. It first happened with Brexit when it shocked the pundits on what the results will be in the UK and that pushed people into investing in the exchange traded funds. Those are big investment funds that normally don’t go into gold as much as they should.

Then along came the goon show with the presidential election under Trump in the United States and that worried a lot of people. Of course, they started moving into gold. It is now slightly abated because we see that Trump has come in and pushed the idea of a lot of infrastructure development.

That was one of the main points of his thank-you speech – that he is going to go big into infrastructure. That could mean that the Federal Reserve discussion in December might see inflation on the horizon and push the interest rates up and that could push gold down. But, the WGC has done snap surveys in China and India and they have said to the big community that buy gold there would you buy if the price dips.

They are saying that they are ready to buy if the price dips, which would be again very good for gold. Any dip in the price will see Chinese and Indian people climbing in to physical gold rather than the investment side of gold. Then going into the new year there are four elections coming up in Europe.

The Dutch, French, German and Italian elections. All of them are showing anti-establishment parties lifting their profile. It is an anti-establishment-type of uncertainty that has been created. These parties are creating a lot of uncertainty around the world and we will see it go into 2017 with all these elections, which should again be good for gold.

The fundamentals of gold are aligned to constantly rising prices going forward particularly because you have got these big physical buyers in India and China who like a lower price. As soon as the price dips, but they know that it is going to go up later, they climb in and that pushes the pricing again.

It would be wonderful if South Africa’s gold mining was strong, but we are now behind Peru, which is ridiculous. We used to be the biggest in the world, but the uncertainty created by our own regulator in South Africa has resulted us into slipping to fifth position in the world, which is tragic.

Kamwendo: The water shortage has prompted the opening of KwaZulu-Natal’s first desalination plant.

Creamer: This drought has caused this in KwaZulu-Natal, it has got its first desalination plant. We have spoken about getting water from the sea for a long time now and we see now that South32, which is listed in Australia and South Africa, have got the Hillside Aluminium plant there.

They need water and they can’t have the water restrictions interfering with their business, adding to their risk. So, they have actually set up this plant for R74-million where they get water from the sea, desalinate it and make sure that they have got a constant supply of water for themselves.

They don't then rely on the water that comes from the municipalities so they leave that for someone else. Perhaps we are going to see a lot of this. Across in Namibia where they have also had water problems, we see the French company Areva, which mines uranium.

They went off their core business and they also set-up a much bigger desalination plant there. It is so big that it supplies a lot of what Swakopmund needs. It said the other day to the government that they are really in the business of uranium and that the government should buy the desalination plant, because it is becoming important for that area. In South Africa itself, we should be doing some inland desalination.

We know the acid-mine drainage problem there. We know that the acid-mine water, which is polluted water is now using the great Lesotho clean water to get a dilution factor. That should not happen. The mines have been prepared since 2012 to desalinate at source. Why the decision has not been taken I don't know.

That should be a quick decision. Although it is raining now that is not what we should be focusing on at the moment. We should be focusing on implementation and proper planning for water. We know that it is going to crop up again. So, hopefully we will have some desalination up here as well.

Kamwendo: South Africa will launch its first nanosatellite early next year as part of an international research programme.

Creamer: There is an international research programme and South Africa is showcasing its ability by actually launching its own nanosatellite. They are also called cubesatellites.

They are very small, about as big as a shoe box and only weighing about 2.5kg, but doing a lot of atmospheric research. This will be part of 60 nanosats that go up. They will be working in the lower orbit and doing a lot of work for the European Commissions framework programme.

It is interesting that Dr Sias Mostert is again behind this, but this time as a private sector company, which he is heading. SCS, which is Space Commercial Services, so no longer with Stellenbosch University, now in the private sector, doing business in outer space.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.