16/08/2013 (On-The-Air)

16th August 2013

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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

Makwetla: A year to the day after Marikana, the black-owned mining company, Royal Bafokeng Platinum, is proving that mining can prosper in South Africa’s troubled platinum belt.

Creamer: This black-owned mining company, Royal Bafokeng Platinum, is proving that mining can prosper in South Africa’s troubled platinum belt in the Marikana area. 

I say this because the results really surprised on the upside this week. Not only in terms of the output, which they managed to achieve and the way they held their costs down, but the industrial peace that they represented in that troubled platinum belt. They held on to that industrial peace despite retrenching 760 people, 11% of their people. 

They say why they can get away with running their business in a very efficient way is because of the partnership structure that they have with their workers where they take them very much into their confidence and show them that in the world people are operating with certain numbers of people. It is no good us being uncompetitive and having more people and simply keeping those on without the productivity.

So they then explained that they need to retrench 11% of that workforce and the workforce understood because of the way the explained it out and they had industrial peace.  What is important there is that they have not only got the operating Bafokeng Rasimone Mine that really performed well, but they also got a big growth project coming up at Styldrift that is going to be mechanised. 

People also realise that your costs drop exponentially when you bring in that mechanisation.  It also helps those 7 000 employees that are still there. They are saying now with the rescoping of this growth project, instead of employing 3 000 people as they anticipated they are now going to employ 4 000 in this much more vibrant mechanised area.

Mother Nature has helped them with very tall ore-bodies there so that they can bring in the machines.

Makwetla: Also on the anniversary of the Marikana tragedy, a union leader is calling for an end to the mine hostel system, which he condemns as “barbaric”. 

Creamer: A union leader in this troubled platinum belt is calling for an end to mine hostel systems, which he condemns as being barbaric. He is also condemning the living-out allowance and is saying let’s bring family life back so that we can have stability. He is Papi Moteti and an impressive quiet spoken person of the RBPlat. 

He represents the National Union of Mineworkers.  We have seen his very mature attitude even towards retrenchments there and the way they understand the business. They have been complimented by Royal Bafokeng. 

He is saying let’s make sure we do not alienate family life, because at the heart of these problems is this whole migrant labour system and we need people living with their families nearby.  I must say the industrial sociologist Gavin Hartford, in his analysis, he puts the migrant labour in the centre of their problem there and also highlights the problems with this living-out allowance, which he said is giving rise to the unrest around the place. 

Also, the arrival of what is known as the dinyatsi or the second wife, or the second family. So Moteti of NUM working in this troubled belt and saying lets have proper housing. That is what they have been demanding and we see that the has been a massive housing programme planned in that area. 

He has said that people can go see them in October where 10% of the first batch of houses comes through.  The Royal Bafokeng are planning 400 houses and then following that with the massive big programme and we see it all around the platinum belt they are talking housing.

Makwetla: A growing number of gold-mining executives are very excited about revolutionary new technology, which they say can rescue the industry from the jaws of defeat.

Creamer: A growing number of people, gold mining executives, are becoming very excited about the revolutionary new technology, which they say can rescue the industry from the jaws of defeat.

The gold mining industry is facing huge challenges at the moment, large sections of the gold mining industry are under water, they are loss-making. The same with the platinum sector. The person to come out and back AngloGold Ashanti’s implementation of this non-blast technology is now the CEO of Harmony Gold, which is our third biggest gold-mining company.

It is not often where you get a rival company praising the technology of a rival company. This is what Graham Briggs has done and he said this can be a potential booster for the entire gold mining sector. He is talking about his own mine Kusasalethu new Carletonville, which is a victim of terrible strikes and actually produced less then half of its production and put Harmony into a loss during this reporting period.

Briggs is saying that the reserves of that mine could be double by this new technology. Why is that so? When we mine in South Africa we normally leave big pillars to support the structure in which we work. But in those pillars are gold.  Those pillars are normally sterilised in the ground for all time, you never come back to them. If you pull those pillars down you have underground collapse, which is very dangerous. 

With this new technology you can mine those pillars, which are very high grade.  When you mine them you mine all the gold, only the gold, all the time, safely.  This is what really is exciting people, because we need to keep our gold business going.  It employs 142 000 people, it paid them R22-billion last year, which is something like R155 000 per person.

We have produced a third of the gold produced by humankind, which is 51 000 tons. We used to produce at 1 000 ton a year. We were the biggest 20 years ago.

We are now producing 167 tons, we are below Peru. So, we are in number six position. What they are saying is why are we all sitting here in Gauteng is because of gold and there is still more gold under the ground to mine. If we introduce these new technologies, we do so in a very efficient way, a very safe way and we create wealth.

Makwetla: 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.

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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