JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – JSE-listed DRDGold is impressed with Zimbabwe's free-dig gold, which it hopes to exploit.

DRDGold CEO Niël Pretorius says that while Zimbabwe is still politically controversial, its gold orebodies are just too good to ignore.

He tells Mining Weekly Online in a video interview that the 550 ha area being studied is 45 minutes south-east of Harare

"I don't think there's another country in Africa where developed infrastructure is so close to gold that's on surface," he says.

He notes that little new mining has taken place in Zimbabwe between the Second World War and now.

"I was surprised when I visited the area that I'm going to be exploring in the next few months to find gold of the quality so near to surface.

"In South Africa, we go down three kilometres in order to recover 4 g/t, and in Zimbabwe, we are finding samples within shovel depth of 8 g/t and 25 g/t," Pretorius says.

He notes that many other mining exploration countries were establishing a competitive advantage in Zimbabwe despite the country's political risk.

He sees it as unfortunate that so few South Africa companies are exploring Zimbabwe, and regretted their giving more opportunity to other more controversial funders.

DRDGold says that it will balance the political risk through a moderate R5-million seed-capital investment.

The company has a 50:50 joint venture with a local Zimbabwean and should the country's indigenisation regulations require 51% Zimbabwean ownership, the company will be prepared to reduce its holding to 49%.

The area that DRDGold is studying is in the locality of established gold mines and the company intends doing whatever is necessary to understand the orebody and the capital requirements ahead of political certainty.

"It's very much an earlybird strategic opportunity that we're trying to exploit and we want to make sure that we have a ready relationship and infrastructure with which to access Zimbabwe's mineral wealth," Pretorius tells Mining Weekly Online.

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