A very quick return is on the way from copper in dumps in the Northern Cape, and $4-billion worth of rare earths is there for the taking in dumps in Phalaborwa.
There is gold galore in tailings dams around Johannesburg, and waste there for the taking linked to every mine that has ever been developed. As part of South Africa’s post-Covid economic recovery, we should definitely pick all the low-hanging fruit, mine shallow reefs, speed up the 200-plus new mine applications backlog and quickly approve exploration applications.
Cutting commute time alone justifies getting rid of Joburg’s dumps, not to mention the land that can be freed up for new development. The opportunity is here for us now to remove, enable people to live closer to work and recover the gold at a time of high gold price. We’re fortunate that the technology required to recover gold from dumps has been perfected and there’s even infrastructure in place to get things going really fast.