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

Kamwendo: South Africa’s troubled State-owned enterprises have been urged to consider a 20% private shareholding to keep them disciplined and transparent.

Creamer: Now the commander-in-chief of the biggest investment bank in the world was in town, Lloyd Blankfin, who came in from New York. He was talking about the enormous potential of investment in South Africa, but also the high risk investing in South Africa. He said that you have got to scale your investments accordingly and he would say the same thing about China.

When he started talking about China, people were saying to him what about the problem with Eskom? He said why don’t you take a cue from China. They also have these vital State-owned enterprises that are absolutely crucial to the country, but they needed a sort of transparency that wasn’t there. What most of them have done is that they have kept the State control at 80% and floated 20% of shares on stock exchanges.

In that way they get the discipline and the rules of the stock exchange and it makes everybody know more about those enterprises, management compensation and costs. That has helped them and also you then get people betting on the success of it and rooting for the success of the likes of Eskom. He is saying that it could be something that South Africa could look at. They were quite bullish about South Africa, Goldman Sachs, as we reported last week.

We now get at a higher level, the commander-in-chief out here. Of course, we know they are massive number crunchers. They are the ones that have actually worked out what the value of our metals and minerals is in the ground at $2.3-trillion.

No wonder they can say there is enormous potential, because he is looking at South Africa’s metals and minerals versus Russia and Australia’s and we are way ahead. $2.3-trillion in the ground before you get them out and start selling them, which lifts the value. That is like $1-trillion ahead of Russia and much more then Australia.  

Kamwendo: A new dust control system is expected to bring an end to the curse of silicosis, the silent killer of tens of thousands of mineworkers.

Creamer: Silicosis has been killing mineworkers since the Cousin Jacks were here from Cornwill in the late 1800s. They were coughing their lungs out with phthisis. They set up a phthisis fund. What people are saying now is that at this point we have got to beat it. This is what the Chamber of Mines came up with for this week.

We believe we have got the silver bullet that will put an end to this silent killer – silicosis and also other lung diseases – through a dust control system, which monitors the dust at the source. If there is a dust spike not only are all engineering systems in place, but they can actually take immediate action rather than react, as they have been doing in the past. It comes against the background of some big court cases.

The court cases are starting to bite the industry. Some 25 000 ex-mineworkers have got together and they are planning to sue the gold mining industry. So all the gold mines are standing by for some big hits. Then, of course, we saw last week that Sasol is also being taken on with a damages case of R84-million for lung disease through the dust you get in the coal mines.

People are saying against this biting legacy now that we must make sure we have got a system that works and they believe they have got the silver bullet.

Kamwendo: A centre of training excellence is being fleshed out to prepare South Africans for the new task of mechanised mining.

Creamer: This has been on the cards for some time that we have a centre of training excellence, which is built around health and safety, really for the mining industry, but also looks at innovation. We know that the current way people mine actually lends itself to more fatalities in the mine.

People have been moving towards mechanised mining and this will be also part of this centre of excellence. In the meantime, this was brought up by Nick Holland, the Gold Fields CEO, saying that this skills aren’t here at the moment and the faster the centre of excellence comes in the better. He is sitting there, one of the mechanisation pioneers. Some 38km west of Johannesburg, we have got a massive big gold mine that will go on for another 100 years with orebodies as tall as the ceiling.

They can mine in a different way, but he is saying that they haven’t really got the skills to do it. What they thought would be really a no brainer, is not and this company isn’t making a profit it is still struggling to break even. So he is saying that South Africa is being held back by this dearth of skills in mechanised mining and we need to catch up. Mechanisation is happening in platinum and Gold Field’s South Deep is virtually the only deep-level gold mine that is mechanised.

Platinum with a flatter type of operation is getting ahead in the North West area near Rustenburg. Platinum mines coming through with mechanisation, but a shortage of skilled people is constraining progress at the South Deep gold mine.

Kamwendo: 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.