By: Dick Stacey

In the last decade, South Africa has tumbled from being a world-class rock engineering research powerhouse to hosting only a few individual researchers in several organisations.

Hundreds of researchers have ‘evaporated’, surely a calamity for one of the world’s major mining countries. How could our world-class rock engineering research and testing capability, so strategically important to the mining industry and to South Africa, have been allowed to disappear completely?

The mining of precious metals in South Africa has for decades taken place at deep levels, and is getting deeper. Rock stresses and temperatures are high, and will increase further the deeper we go. High rock stresses are the source of accidents – rock falls remain a major cause of mining accidents and fatalities. Without ongoing rock engineering research, we are unlikely to be able to solve the mining challenges associated with deeper mining.

Our world-renowned deep-level expertise in rock engineering developed over decades of research. Sadly, the recent history of our rock mechanics and rock engineering research, as well as general mining research, is depressing. After the Coalbrook disaster of January 1960, in which 400 miners died, mining and rock mechanics research increased. Frequent damaging rockbursts in the gold mines also contributed to a vibrant research scene involving hundreds of full-time researchers.

The Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) began research into rock mechanics in the early 1950s, and South Africa soon became a world leader in this field. The rock mechanics division at the CSIR developed a world-class rock testing laboratory and a databank of rock behaviour from tests carried out for research and commercial purposes. Members of the CSIR staff were represented on committees that prepared the ‘Suggested Methods’ for testing rock, published by the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM), which have effectively become rock testing standards. At least four members of this CSIR division’s staff subsequently became internationally recognised professors of rock engineering – in the UK, Canada, the US and Australia, and in South Africa.

In the 1960s, the mining industry established the Chamber of Mines Research Organisation (Comro). At its peak, Comro employed about 600 full-time researchers. Excellent rock mechanics research facilities existed and Comro produced important research outputs. Several Comro employees also became leading academics: four professors in the US, one in Austria and one in South Africa.

As a powerhouse in rock engineering research up to the 1990s, South Africa provided a president of the ISRM and more than ten VPs. Two members of the CSIR/Comro research environment received the Leopold Muller Award, the ISRM’s most prestigious award, out of just six such awards to date. Two South Africans have been awarded the status of Fellow of the ISRM, out of just 15 in the world. Further, five researchers from the CSIR/Comro have been Rocha Medal recipients for the best rock mechanics PhD in the world in a particular year, a substantially better record than any other country. Four people who developed their rock engineering skills in South Africa are now ‘household names’ in the rock engineering field.

In the 1990s, mining companies dispensed with Comro by ‘giving’ it to the CSIR. It became the CSIR’s Division of Mining Technology (Miningtek). The CSIR’s Pretoria-based rock mechanics staff and some equipment were moved to Miningtek, resulting in a loss of certain staff and some rock equipment. Miningtek continued to be a significant recognised rock engineering research facility.

In about 2002, the departure of Miningtek’s director and the subsequent loss of numerous senior staff members severely reduced the research capability. It was replaced by the Centre for Mining Innovation, which has only one rock mechanics researcher. It may be concluded that the CSIR no longer has a meaningful rock mechanics research capability. What was once a world-class rock testing facility at the CSIR in Pretoria can now no longer carry out any such testing to the required quality. The CSIR’s databank of rock testing results is not adequately accessible – 50 years of testing records effectively lost. Thankfully, all the Comro research reports, documenting research carried out over 40 years, have been archived.

Will South Africa, with its enviable ‘horde’ of deep mineral resources, be able to mine these resources in the future? Different mining methods, facilities and techniques will be required, and developing these will require significant fundamental research.

Government should ensure that the required fundamental, long-term research is carried out, and invest in that research. Mining companies also have a responsibility, but their strategic requirements and policies will be driven by different factors, since they are responsible to their shareholders. Many of our mining companies are international, and their strategies encompass operations elsewhere in the world. Expensive South African mining operations, beset by technical and labour problems, are strategically likely to receive less attention and research funding than those less complicated operations elsewhere. Mining companies are also more likely to fund research that is short term and applied, rather than long-term, fundamental research. Strategic questions are:
• Is there a national strategy for the deep mining necessary to recover our valuable minerals?

• Does the CSIR, South Africa’s national research organisation, have a corresponding research strategy?

• Do mining companies have strategies for the recovery of their deep resources?

• Who will carry out the necessary research work? Will it be done in South Africa by South Africans or will it be outsourced to research and development organisations in other countries?

• When will this research need to be completed, that is, what is the strategic plan?

• Will it be possible for the depressed state of rock mechanics research to be revived? Are there suitable research personnel available in South Africa to guide the research programmes? Do South African universities have the capability to develop research-active students and, if so, for how long will they retain such capability?

These questions imply long-term strategic thinking. In my opinion, they must be addressed urgently to ensure that rock mechanics and mining engineering research in South Africa does not become a lost cause in the next decade.

• Stacey is emeritus professor in the School of Mining Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand