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

Moodley: Fifteen Australians have arrived in South Africa to save Gauteng’s biggest gold mine from further financial loss.

Creamer: South Africans normally don’t have to be taught how to suck eggs specially when it comes to mining, maybe in cricket.

But, his technical team has arrived with a special mission now to actually prevent our biggest gold mine in Gauteng, the gold mine that should be going to 2070 in South Africa, probably the last one standing, South Deep, from becoming a white elephant. R40-billion is being invested in this mine and it is fully mechanised.

The Australians are the ones now that have to try and save it, because not enough ore is coming up from underground because of bottlenecks there.

We know that the Australians when it comes to mechanised underground mining they are well versed with it. When it comes to mechanised underground mining South Africans aren’t used to it. We are used to the more labour-intensive manual side.  You can see that going over to mechanisation is not always a quick answers to a maiden's prayer, although we know that we have to do it, 2 500 people where retrenched to make way for the new mechanisation process.

Wonderful big jumbo drills under there, great load-haul and dumping, but unfortunately not mechanised is the roof bolting and it has become a bit of a bottleneck. So, the Australians have got to come in now and try and straighten this out.

Moodley: The simple argument for mechanisation is that it improves productivity?

Creamer: Improves productivity enormously, but we are not used to it. These big jumbo drills are fantastically expensive things and they need to be utilised properly. We know that college graduates operate these things in other countries, so we need a big upskilling. It is human resource now that needs to come to the party. Great ore-body great equipment but human resource needs to come to the party.

Moodley: Perhaps AMCU will get its demands of R12 500 pay if the workers are skilled.

Creamer:  Yes, I spoke to one of the machine operators there and asked how much does he earn? He said R50 000 a month. Never mind R12 500 they go way beyond that.

Moodley: So skills is the answer to creating jobs and having long lasting jobs.

An urgent call has gone out to the government to use the South African Defence Force to stop illegal miners from wrecking some of South Africa’s richest gold mines.

Creamer: This was shocking, the top South African producer of gold at the moment Sibanye, with a very good profit, big dividend, their head Neal Froneman, said don’t think that this illegal mining is only taking place in abandoned mines, it is taking place in his mines. It has got to such a scale it is literally war.

He said that it would not be inappropriate to bring in the SANDF to stop these illegal miners from wrecking some of our riches South African gold mines. Froneman is talking about not only people from outside, but he is saying that there is an element within his own employee base that when they extensively have gone on leave, they are not on leave, they use that leave to go underground and they mine for their own account.

It has got to a point where at times they cut the blasting lines, they turn over the ore boxes. So there is a weird statement being made by the illegal miners, why should they make themselves so well known under there? Is this not a political statement being addressed? Behind this all of course is very wealthy syndicates who are inducing all this and driving it from the background. Those Mr Bigs have to be caught.

Moodley: 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.