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: We started out there with a story on mining from Mr Joseph Mathunjwa and a really difficult time it is for South Africa this week.

Creamer: My sympathy goes out to those people. I have been down the Lily mine and it is a very different mine. You enter it from an adit and you go in to the mountain side. It is not the sort of mine we have tragedies in. My prayers are really that these miners can be saved, they have been down there for a whole week now.

Kamwendo: Africa is entering a phase of becoming a factory to the world, top speakers said at the Mining Indaba.

 Creamer: It was wonderful to hear at the Mining Indaba that Africa is entering a phase of becoming a factory of the world. We used to hear that three decades ago about China and to hear it about Africa now is extremely encouraging. It is articulated best by people who know this story. I am talking now about Robert Hersov with Invest Africa and Rick Menell with Credit Suisse, the banking business.

Why I said it is great to hear it from them, is because decades back, their forbears said the same thing in Joburg where I’m sitting here. It was Slip Menell and Hersovs who came into Joburg and began mining gold in the Stilfontein area. They also used those proceeds to build industry. We can still go into Wadeville today and see the Consol Glass that they built.

We can go into Kwa-Zulu Natal and see Bakers Biscuits. We can see the things that are still there that spun off and were leveraged from mining. Now, those two, Robert Hersov and Rick Menell, are saying that this is happening in Africa. What a wonderful message to come through, because that means we won’t have a repeat of what Tendai Biti, the former Zimbabwean Minister, complained about in his keynote address saying the 24 countries in Africa that are mineral-rich are doing worse then 26 countries that are mineral-poor.

The curse of this mining has been around, it can end if we enter Africa in the proper state of mind and not like Colonial past, but that you have to diversify early. That was the message that came through in this panel. Also taken part the Zambian Presidential aspirant Hakainde Hichilema, known as HH.

He will be standing to be Zambian President on August 11, and he said, diversify, that is the way we have got to operate. We have got to use that money from mining to make sure we create industry, agriculture and fisheries. That you build tourism, but you don't just end up with mining because it is a cyclical business and it hurts Africa if you don’t add the diversification.

Kamwendo: The mining industry’s very stressed state is moving governments and investors much closer together.

Creamer: It is a tough time in the mining industry and when there is blood on the street the people will come together and say that we have got to have a different model. We have got to reinvent because we have done things wrong in the past. Government has tried to harvest to fast, companies have really just borrowed recklessly and there has been a reckless use of capital allocation.

They are now saying, hang on, let’s do this properly together and that is why this downturn has been so important that they can work together within it to make sure that you do the proper thing when you go into a country and you are a miner. One thing, a point made by Mark Bristow, who also started just down the road here in Johannesburg, but has done so well in Africa, is that the mining companies owe it to their host countries to invest during the downturns.

They should be investing in exploration now. We know that his company, Randgold, started with a meagre $10-million and it is being built into a really remarkable company on the London Stock Exchange. It has been done through discovery and development. He has not been going out there buying assets expensively, because you want to impress shareholders and then the markets turn and you distress the shareholders, he actually goes out and discovers and develops. That is why he has had such stability. He has made sure he can have a profitable gold business at $1 000 an ounce.

There is still a lot of fat in that. We hope that things will change and we even saw the Archbishop of Cape Town was there putting in his experience with mining on how you have to go to powerful to try help the powerless and how that has worked for him. If you look in the rear-view mirror of the super cycle, you see there is so much more to do in a better way. This has focused the minds during this 22^nd mining indaba, which has just ended in Cape Town.

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