South Africans threw away their leadership in gold mining, lost their top position in ferrochrome, and are now in the throes of throwing away their platinum crown as well.

Gold production is down to 1905 levels, at 167 t a year; South Africa’s long-standing top global position in ferrochrome has been lost to China, and South Africa is now playing fast and loose with its platinum endowment, to such an extent that exasperated end-users are tipping Zimbabwe, of all places, as the next South Africa when it comes to platinum group metals.

Robert Mugabe notwithstanding, end-users attending last week’s mining conference in Johannesburg pointed to Zimbabwe having better productivity, more eager workers, superior by-product credits and an important head start in having shallower mines at an average depth of 230 m, less than a quarter of South Africa’s average shaft depth of 1 010 m average depth.

In addition, platinum recyclers have seen the gap left by dithering South Africans and have collected four times more platinum scrap and are able to supply into the market with certainty, which South Africans are no longer able to do.

Also emphasising the great value of platinum is Japan, which is resorting to storing increasing volumes of platinum in Swiss vaults.

The only country in the platinum value chain that is behaving uncooperatively is South Africa.

We seem oblivious to the huge value of our metals and minerals.

Even in manganese, we are unable to secure a market share anywhere near commensurate with a country that has 80% of world manganese reserves.

South Africa allowed the Growth, Employment and Redistribution programme to deny it the electricity capacity that the Reconstruction and Development Programme had allocated for power station development – and the government of the day even took away Eskom’s money as dividends to the State, instead of insisting that the power utility use the money to fund the upkeep of its existing power station fleet.

Fortunately, both gold and platinum have new mining methods that have the potential to be worth the equivalent of massive price increases.
AngloGold Ashanti’s new South African technology has fantastic medium-term potential and selected blast mining, advocated by research coordinator Dr RE (Robbie) Robinson, can immediately offer 100% precious metals recovery, and not merely the 70% and 65% of recovery that current wasteful methods allow.

Ending up with 30% and 35% more gold and platinum simply through the implementation of superior technology is a no-brainer.

On the other hand, continuing to lose such large volumes of gold and platinum through obsolete mining methods is wanton destruction of national patrimony.

South Africa’s metals and minerals have the potential to transform this economy and to boost communities, but government, business, labour and civil society are unable to get their acts together, which means that individual efforts will have to come to the fore to achieve a turnaround.