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

Kamwendo: DRDGOLD this week celebrated being on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for 130 years.

Creamer: Can you believe it, going back to 1895, I mean this is absolute resilience. It is the sort of resilience which we should start having in South Africa. The company has been through two Anglo-Boer Wars. It has been through two World Wars. It has been through several pestilences, including the rinderpest. It has been through COVID, it has been through the flu epidemic. It has gone through ups and downs and it is stronger than ever. It has got a market capitalisation of R27-billion. It is investing R10-billion at the moment and it is doing great things, because it is removing these old mine dumps. It is getting the gold out of these old mine dumps. It is likely to go ahead with another big project. It has got two big ones on the go, one on the East Rand, where you can almost call it Ergo Two. It has got a second phase of getting the gold out of the dumps, in Brakpan. Then it is also going into the Far West Rand, where there’s another a massive opportunity to get gold out of the dumps. With the sky-high gold price, another project opportunity is beginning to present itself closer to Johannesburg, at Crown, where if it removes the dump material and gets it out of the area, it will have fantastic area of ground become available for a potential smart city, close to Joburg CBD and not far from Sandton. So, this is the sort of thing this 130-year-old mining company does and it already its sights set on its 150th anniversary, 20 years from now.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s gold mining companies must no longer be allowed to close prematurely.

Creamer: This is what came up on the sidelines of people who came to this 130th  anniversary celebration at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which must also be credited because, it has been listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for 130 years, which means the Johannesburg Stock Exchange has been there for 130 years and people were calculating that this Johannesburg Stock Exchange has got twice the value of South Africa's GDP. What they focused on is that, in the past, mines have been closed too soon. Gold mines have been closed prematurely and this must not be allowed again. The five main gold mining companies that are left must exhaust the gold that is in there, because how come do zama-zamas know that there is so much gold still under there? They risk their lives, they go down in the tens of thousands, because the gold mining companies pulled out too soon, and there is still a lot of gold value down there to be had. What they are now saying is that we must never allow that mistake of premature mine closure to happen again. When we mine here, we must extract all the value, particularly with these existing remaining mines that are now given a very big boost by a gold price that’s going through the roof and allowing them to mine for much longer

Kamwendo: This week’s announcement of the new Engineer-General South Africa position is hugely welcome.

Creamer:  I mean, I just love the sound of it. The Office of the Engineer-General South Africa. You know, this is long in coming, because our engineering standards have been slipping. We need to now have an office, then make sure that poor engineering doesn't happen. It is Public Works and Infrastructure, that’s the department that is going to set up this Office of the Engineer-General South Africa. We have had to deal, in the Southern Cape, with a building collapse there two years ago and 34 people were killed. We are not used to that sort of thing happening in South Africa where you are building a new building and it just collapses. Okay, what about infrastructure? We getting used to bad infrastructure, but that is not good enough. So, having an Office of the Engineer-General South Africa couldn't be coming at a more importune time. It’s so wonderful, and I hope they get it going fast.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing, editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly.