In October last year, 120 people assembled for five weeks to develop a strategy for South Africa’s beleaguered mining industry. They did so under the banner of Phakisa, or Hurry Up, and one of this initiative’s tangible outcomes has been the reopening of the old Chamber of Mines Research Organisation (Comro). Comro is being revitalised as a public–private partnership under the management of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. The hope is that the new Comro will help mining to form the centrepiece of the cluster that advances Southern Africa’s economies through across-the-board twenty-first century know-how. Phakisa’s aim is to bring the best out of mining and its core linkages as a way of driving broad-based economic growth.