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

Perlman: A uranium mine in Klerksdorp.

Creamer: It's full steam ahead for a new uranium mine Klerksdorp, the Dominion mine, which is part of Aflease. Not without reason, because we see that the price of uranium is approaching and going beyond $30 a pound. This is a very good reason, with demand up, to go back into this inactive area of uranium mining. It is interesting to see how the South Africa operation Aflease plans to go into it. It has already got in pre-merger talks with a Toronto-listed company. The role of Canadians in mining finance is becoming very pronounced. We saw that the Toronto Stock Exchange last year list something like 1 700 mining entities to the JSE Security Exchange's four, so Toronto is streaking ahead. Toronto is the place where people go now for mining finance and we can see even an all South African former Afrikander Lease going off now to Toronto as a primary listing and using JSE as a second listing. The whole project will be $100-million and the idea that it will produce something like 4-million pounds of uranium a year from 2007.

Perlman: Hi-tech comes to the informal settlements in the form of barcoded shacks. Tell us more about that.

Creamer: You have got very hi-tech and very low-tech know-how working very well in Gauteng's shanty towns. It is all part of the Gauteng Provincial Government's plan to make sure that informal settlement activity is eradicated by 2014. We have had 400 people going into the informal settlements, sticking barcodes on to shanty dwellings, scanning these in, using palm-top computers to capture all information on people living in these informal dwellings, using other hi-tech global positioning systems to position the dwellings and using geographical information systems. Every bit of hi-tech information technology imaginable being used to get the required information processed so that the people living in these informal surroundings can be matched to the waiting list for homes. Gauteng can then start processing the applications for housing subsidisation. Already more that 400 000 homes have been barcoded in this way. The barcoding programmed has reached the end of its first phase and is now entering its second phase, which will look into the backyard areas of the Orlandos, the Meadowlands and established townships to see what sort of pent-up demand there is for housing among backyard dwellers and also to assess the need for social amenities, so that the target of the province can be met by 2014 to get rid of all informal settlements in Gauteng.

Perlman: The Reds used to be under the bed, now one of them has come out.

Creamer: We are going to have to look out for the acronym 'Red', because it is going to crop up more often. The Reds are about electricity distribution in general and regional electricity distribution in particular. The first of these has come into effect in Cape Town in the Western Cape and that is Red One. There will be another five Reds in South Africa. The idea of this is to take the assets of Eskom Distribution and 187 municipalities and to consolidate them so that we can get more tariff harmony. At last count there were 2 000 different price classes used to charge for electricity. Reds will seek to harmonise tariffs and at the same time make sure that there is no under-investment in the crucial area of electrical distribution. Reds will also benchmark against one another so that all can see that we are up to speed. The whole idea is consolidation, streamlining and efficiency and competition is coming into regional electricity distribution. Not all municipalities are happy about this, of course, and some of them may already be kicking and screaming, although they won't be dragged in kicking and screaming, because it is a voluntary process and they will have to become part of a Red voluntarily and hopefully there will also be public private partnerships, so you will not only have the Reds representing the public sector alone, but that there will also be private-sector partnership to look after the up-keep and maintenance of electrical distribution infrastructure, using the PPP concept of public-private partnerships.

Perlman: Speaking of electricity is the conductor of considerable energy letting us know what is happening out there in the real economy. 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.

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