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: A major skills elevation programme is under way in Ghana to match the leap to modern, mechanised mining in the centuries-old Ashanti goldfields.

Creamer: This is perhaps a lesson for South Africa where you can’t just keep harvesting a mine. We know that the Ashanti Kingdom has spent hundreds of years gold mining and we see the artefacts in gold and we know that it goes back very far. It has now reached a stalling situation where they actually had to close the mine completely, realising that you can not just go on working the way you have for hundreds of years in a manual way and that you have got to make a leap.

It is like a car that is giving a lot of trouble you have got to send it to the garage and get it repaired. It has been quite hard for the people of Ghana. There has been big retrenchments and it has had a big impact on the Ghanaian economy, because this is an important gold mine. The Government is aligned now to the rebuilders, which are from South Africa. We know that Randgold, born just down the road in Selby, and AngloGold Ashanti, down the road in Newtown, are combining now and saying that they will spend under $1-billion to actually create a world-class mine out of this.

They say they cannot keep people of Ghana labourers for ever. They have got to move into a new facet of best practice. This has got government and labour alignment in Ghana. It is also part of a big alleviation where peoples skills programme is lifting. Dr Mark Bristow from Randgold will recall how in West Africa he has created so many West African metallurgists and engineers and that is what he foresees now, a new alleviation in Ghana to resuscitate the Ghanaian economy with the labour and government right behind the revitalisation of the Obuasi gold mine, which has been such a problem child.

Kamwendo: Sibanye Gold this week took firm steps towards generating its own electricity in its own power stations.

Creamer: You see, Sibanye Gold put up its hand last week saying that they want to be the mining champion of South Africa. We can see them in gold, already in uranium and wanting to get into platinum. Now, perhaps they are putting a toe into coal, because we see a very stressed asset there, the Waterberg Coal Company, listed in Australia, were cash-strapped and having to suspend their shares in Australia and South Africa.

We saw them not paying on due time to the Standard Bank in South Africa. Jumping into the breach there is Sibanye Gold where it sees and opportunity putting some cash into that in exchange for coal supply. Sibanye has been saying for some time that they want to generate their own power using coal-fired power stations and possibly the sun.

This start now is for the discard coal, they don’t want the expensive coal from this Waterberg, they are looking for discard, which is an important lesson. Instead of building up these big stockpiles and dumps of discard coal that has never been used in Witbank, it sort of catches alight at night, keep using it now so these stockpiles don't get to big. At the start of this new mine they will keep using the discard, which is low-cost coal and hopefully low-cost electricity for this gold mining operation, with Sibanye soon also to be involved in platinum mining and wanting to be the champion of mining in South Africa.

It seems that this is what the South African government is looking for and the African National Congress is looking for, after losing our mines to the London stock exchange. Now, newcomers are coming in saying that they can be the diversified miner who can fill that gap on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and generate their own electricity from their own power station. There is a problem with the Department of Energy, with the independent power producers.

The department has again extended the bids so the delays go on and on and it is all about red tape. Perhaps that needs to be sharpened up, otherwise you can have every intention of every gold mine in the country to do their own power generation, but unless the structure is provided by government, you are not going to reach first base.

Kamwendo: Engineers are sounding the alarm about a potential Kariba dam collapse.

Creamer: This could be devastating. The people who have come out with this, The Institute of Risk Management have highlighted the potential devastation of the collapse of the Kariba dam. BBC reported in 2014 that there was serious problems there, that the foundations of that dam, which keeps a massive reservoir of water, were actually eroding and they were breaking away. This was very dangerous because the whole wall could collapse.

Now, there hasn’t really been enough urgent reaction. Engineers are saying that it needs urgent action to come in and repair that and also to make sure that the whole dam is upgraded. We see that the funds are coming through from the World Bank and from the European Union and African Development Bank, but no actual action on the ground. These risk managers are saying now what is the implication if this collapses.

This will be four times worse, the wall of water that will spread, across will be four times worse then any tsunami that we have seen in the world. It will hit Mozambique in eight hours, it will smash the Cahora Bassa Dam, which means that we would have a situation where the electricity we are getting from that would also disappear, but that is nothing, because about 3-million lives will be lost.

Farming would be put out of action, economies would be put out of action for a decade, because you would have to rebuild this. This is the warning coming through from the Institute of Risk Management of South Africa.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he’ll be back with us at the same time next week.