South Africa’s coal mining industry has the potential to guarantee jobs for South Africa’s young generation, owing to the mineral being essential to the generation of baseload electricity, which is crucial for industrial development.

This is the view of Anglo American Coal South Africa CEO Themba Mkhwanazi, who was a speaker at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) School of Mining Engineering Society’s yearly gala dinner, held last month. The event, themed ‘The future of the mining industry in South Africa: the supply and consumption of mining graduates’, focused on the current and future job prospects of mining students in a struggling mining industry.

He listed coal’s abundance, affordability and easy and safe transportability, as well as its being a key baseload electricity generation fuel, as its advantages. He added that coal was used worldwide as the major source of energy in the largest- capacity power stations and, although there had been attempts to phase out coal-fired power stations, owing to their high levels of carbon emissions, they continued to form the backbone of many countries’ baseload electricity gene- ration infrastructure.

“Coal will be with us for the foreseeable future. This will require new skills, which Wits School of Mining Engineering students [could] offer to take the coal mining industry forward and grow South Africa’s economy,” said Mkhwanazi.

He noted that coal mining would, therefore, continue to be a significant source of employment in South Africa’s mining industry going forward. “In 2014, the domestic coal industry employed about 87 500 people – this is significant, considering the secondary and downstream industries that benefit directly from coal mining.”

However, Mkhwanazi also highlighted that the mining industry was changing at a rapid pace and facing significant challenges, with both aspects resulting in the “traditional profile of a miner” changing considerably.

He said hope was the most crucial aspect any student should have when looking for employment in the mining industry, especially during the current environment of slowing demand for raw materials in global commodities markets.

“The country is currently in critical need [of] leadership . . . from a political standpoint” as well as a business sector standpoint, said Mkhwanazi, adding that recent political events showed that leadership standards and the expectations of leaders were set “very low”.

Leadership, he explained, required accountability and responsibility – attributes students should build if they wanted to be industry leaders. “Going forward, the leadership role within the mining industry will become increasingly crucial.”

Further, Mkhwanazi confirmeded his confidence in the coal industry: “Global energy demand has grown strongly and will continue to increase, particularly in developing countries, where energy is needed for economic growth and poverty alleviation. Coal . . . forms part of the global energy mix, thereby being vital for global energy security.”

Mkhwanazi told Wits School of Mining Engineering students that they were at the “cusp of a career that will last many years” and that they were part of a “special club”.

“When you started high school, there was probably 1.5-million other learners also starting high school. The sad reality is that only about 500 000 of those . . . made it to matric and, of this number, only 300 000 passed matric, with a third of these obtaining exemption to qualify for tertiary education . . . diplomas or degrees. Of these 100 000 learners, only 20 000 had mathematics and science as subjects.”

Therefore, Mkhwanazi said, the Wits School of Mining Engineering class of 2016 graduates belonged to the “20 000 club”.

“The reality is that 20 000 out of 1.5-million can be classified as special in anybody’s book,” he said, adding that about half the number of first-year university students dropped out, thereby decreasing the number of graduates even more.

“This special club comprises talents and skills, and has the potential to change South Africa’s economy. It has the potential to take the mining industry to new and unimaginable realms of possibility and prosperity – you are obligated to take up that responsibility,” said Mkhwanazi.