Africa Mining – Page 194 – Republic of Mining

Gold industry awaits technology breakthrough – by Dewald van Rensburg (Miningmx.com – October 10, 2011)

October 10, 2011

http://www.miningmx.com/

[miningmx.com] — THERE is great excitement about a promising new technology which could make deep underground mining possible and ensure the future of South Africa’s gold industry.

Deep underground mines are engineering miracles, but the limitations of the available technology have long been evident to South Africa’s gold industry.

The world’s deepest mine is AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng, which extends about 4km underground. To be able to mine much deeper than this, where millions of currently inaccessible – or uneconomic – fine ounces of gold lie, would require a breakthrough.

Significantly, AngloGold was recently the first group to herald such a breakthrough with an apparently large degree of certainty. Within three to five years the group wants to develop machines to replace mineworkers at the stope face.

This target not only involves machines that can do the work of humans at the “coalface”, but also means the end of mining methods in standard use for more than a century.

Barrick Gold’s Tanzanian headache: Blood and Stone – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – Report on Business Magazine – October, 2011)

September 29, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Across the cavernous pits and the mountains of waste rock, the alarm wails eerily, warning that an explosion is imminent. Dozens of villagers gather silently at the edge of a pit, past the holes that have been torn in the fence, waiting for their chance.

Then comes the blast. As a plume of smoke curls into the sky, the scavengers scramble into the pit, eager to prise a living from the freshly smashed rock.

Suddenly the police appear, careering over the rocky road from another corner of the vast mine. The pickup truck full of armed men in green uniforms bounces across the wasteland like a scene from Mad Max. The truck hurtles toward the scavengers, but is halted by a boulder that they have pulled across its path. By the time the police can leap down and move the boulder, the scavengers have scattered into the nearby trees, where they wait for their next opportunity.

This is the daily ritual of conflict at the North Mara gold mine in Tanzania: Intrude and retreat, pursue and withdraw—punctuated by flare-ups that sometimes leave people dead.

For an eyewitness, it’s difficult to reconcile this cycle of violence with the avowed community-friendly policies of the mine’s parent company, Barrick Gold Corp. and the professed goal of its founder, Peter Munk, of making good corporate citizenship the “calling card that precedes us wherever we go.”

How Congress Devastated Congo – by David Aronson (New York Times OP/ED – August 7, 2011)

August 22, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/

David Aronson is a freelance journalist and blogger focusing on Central Africa.

IT’S a long way from the marble halls of Congress to the ailing mining towns of eastern Congo, but the residents of Nyabibwe and Nzibira know exactly what’s to blame for their economic woes.

The “Loi Obama” or Obama Law — as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act of 2010 has become known in the region — includes an obscure provision that requires public companies to indicate what measures they are taking to ensure that minerals in their supply chain don’t benefit warlords in conflict-ravaged Congo. The provision came about in no small part because of the work of high-profile advocacy groups like the Enough Project and Global Witness, which have been working for an end to what they call “conflict minerals.”

Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank law has had unintended and devastating consequences, as I saw firsthand on a trip to eastern Congo this summer. The law has brought about a de facto embargo on the minerals mined in the region, including tin, tungsten and the tantalum that is essential for making cellphones.

Africa’s Emerging Partners [China, Brazil and India]: Friend or foe? by Nicholas Norbrook and Marshall Van Valen (The Africa Report – June 2011)

July 25, 2011

The Africa Report: An insight into Africa, an outlook on the world.

Land grabs and exploited workers dominate the headlines, but Africa’s relationship with emerging partners is more complex and will boost the continent – if states negotiate wisely.

Fact or fiction? African mineworkers toil for peanuts, under the watchful eye of the gun-toting Chinese overseers. Guinea’s green savannah is etched ragged with intensive palm-oil plantations. Madagascan communities are pushed off their land as South Korean land merchants order the island’s ancestral earth to be ploughed up for export crops. Asian banks rush to sign up African governments for new loans they can ill afford, in exchange for poorly constructed buildings.

Indian gem merchants bribe politicians to gain access to huge diamond reserves, with profits spirited out of the country via anonymous Mauritian front companies. Taxes avoided, workers exploited, environments despoiled, resources bled, countries indebted. The dream deferred.

 The bogeymen raised by the advance of Africa’s emerging partners are projections of post-colonial guilt. After decades of achieving little for Africa, the West has been shaken by the arrival of powerful emerging economies on the continent. Self-appointed Africa saviour Sir Bob Geldof says: “China is engaged in an entirely mercantilist expedition in Africa. They are driving huge amounts of growth. But at what cost?” Chinese officials deny the charge. “For China to sustain its development, we need to have a stable supply of energy and minerals. I don’t think that is something bad, or something evil,” says Liu Guijin, China’s special representative for Sudan. Geldof is currently raising $1bn to launch a private equity fund aimed at Africa.  A new report from the OECD and the African Development Bank (AfDB) is more measured. 

Calls for [South African] nationalisation need to be debated, not dismissed – by Mark Cutifani (Business Day – July 13, 2011)

July 20, 2011

Business Day is South Africa’s most influential and respected daily newspaper, offering incisive coverage of business, politics, labour and other current affairs, written by the country’s top journalists.

Mark Cutifani is CEO of AngloGold Ashanti and vice-president of the South African Chamber of Mines.

HAVING worked in SA for only four years, I am always reticent to comment on the country’s internal affairs, as I am aware that I do not have a full understanding of local history. However, I do have some sense of what has worked in the economic frameworks of the 30 or so countries in which I have worked and developed new businesses. Where SA is concerned, I remain a great optimist about its future due to the desire in its people to create a truly democratic and egalitarian society.

In this context, the nationalisation issue is troubling, given the polarising nature of the discourse, which is having a divisive effect on our society as we scream and talk past each other. The nature of the debate is frightening domestic and international investors, threatening an important resource of funds needed to deliver on our 5-million jobs target.

We will not deal with these issues through business simply by shouting louder than the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League. Young people are justified in calling for broad social change. The logic behind the call for nationalisation needs to be sensibly debated rather than angrily dismissed. However, only a balanced debate comparing the available options will help us find the right pathway to broad economic liberation.

The [global] race for rare metals – by Geoffrey York and Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – July 16, 2011)

July 16, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media. Brenda Bouw is the Globe’s mining reporter.

VANRHYNSDORP, SOUTH AFRICA, VANCOUVER – Filled with radioactive waste, its buildings gutted and crumbling after 48 years of disuse, the abandoned Steenkampskraal mine would seem to hold little value to anyone.

Until recently, the decaying apartheid-era mine in a remote patch of South African desert was mainly of interest to scientists studying the effects of high radiation on the thousands of bats that hibernate in the empty mine shaft.

But soon the bats will be evicted, the radioactive waste will be buried and the shaft refurbished. The Canadian owners of this mine are scrambling to tap the mine’s rare-earth minerals – possibly the hottest commodity on the planet these days, with immense strategic and technological significance, and pivotal to a global geopolitical rivalry.

As prices soar, there is a frantic global rush to develop new sources of rare earths. These obscure minerals – 17 different elements with futuristic names such as neodymium, samarium, yttrium and lanthanum – are crucial for everything from guided missiles and hybrid cars to flat-screen televisions, iPods and BlackBerry phones.

Mining the Congo: Golden opportunity [Banro Corp.] – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – July 10, 2011)

July 10, 2011

Jennifer Wells is a feature writer with the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. No stranger to the mining industry, Ms. Wells won the 1999 National Business Book Award for Fever: The Dark Mystery of the Bre-X Gold Rush as well as covering many other major mining stories.

TWANGIZA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Baraka Zihindula appears small for 13, sitting on his bum on the ground, in his royal blue school shorts and short-sleeved shirt. He’s worrying the earth with a stick in the distracted manner of adolescent boys everywhere as he tells his life story, a task that might seem inflated for a mere 13-year-old, until you learn Baraka’s life thus far has included six years of hard labour.

Baraka was 8 when he started panning for gold, working artisanally as a miner alongside his two brothers and his father, just one more family, invisible amid the million-plus informal miners who scrabble for a subsistence living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Baraka’s family lives in the village of Luchiga and every day, seven out of seven, the boys would accompany their father to the river. A little gold was found just about every day, Baraka says, and that little gold was converted to a little money and with that little money his mother was able to feed the family.

Sometimes the father would keep the boys working overnight.

Seated in the shade of a tree, a stone’s throw from the school he now attends, Baraka has kicked off his plastic sandals. There’s a light breeze, the air is fresh and Baraka looks handsome in his schoolboy uniform.

Mine workers dig in on wages, pensions, benefits – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – July 6, 2011)

July 6, 2011

Mine workers are flexing their muscles amid surging commodity prices and increased labour shortages, setting the stage for more union unrest.

Workers at some of the world’s largest copper, gold and coal mines have either walked off the job or are threatening to strike, pushing demands for higher wages, and better job security and benefits.

The labour activism is playing out worldwide, from rolling strikes at Australian coal mines jointly owned by BHP Billiton Ltd. and Mitsubishi Corp., to walkouts at Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold’s giant Grasberg mine in Indonesia. African gold producers AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. and Gold Fields Ltd. are also facing labour action, as is Chile’s state-owned copper giant Codelco.

Mining companies are trying to hold their ground to prevent a further spike in costs, at the same time maintaining output levels to capitalize on near-record prices for gold, copper, silver and coal. Prolonged strike action could lead to production shortages that would in turn drive up prices for resources as it did with nickel last year following lengthy strikes by workers at Brazilian mining giant Vale SA’s Canadian operations.

Coltan a minefield in the Congo – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – July 3, 2011)

July 3, 2011

“Don’t just shock us. Make us understand.” — Jason Stearns, Congo watcher

So you want to see the minerals!” Edouard Mwangachuchu, senator, Democratic Republic of the Congo, quickly advances toward a cargo trailer situated high on a verdant emerald hilltop in Masisi Territory. It is a glorious day.

Masisi, in the Congolese province of North Kivu, is lush and agriculturally rich, rising in terraced steps more visually fitting the postcard pastures of today’s Rwanda, or possibly the rice plateaus of Vietnam, than the Congo, which often — too often — seems a desiccated and wretched place.

In Masisi the sweet peas are white, the lupines are purple, and the senator, in his straw hat and pink golf shirt, looks the part of the weekend farmer, which he is, crowing that he produces the finest Gouda cheese in all the Congo. The senator is also a mine operator of a modestly mechanized operation, and on this day he is in an expansive mood.

The lock on the cargo trailer is surprisingly slight, given the riches stored inside.

The Congo’s tin soldiers (Blood Minerals) – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – June 26, 2011)

July 3, 2011

“You’ll say I walked across Africa with my wrists unshackled, and now I am one more soul walking free in a white skin, wearing some thread of the stolen goods, cotton or diamonds, freedom at the very least, prosperity.” — Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

BISIE, CONGO—The figure stirs suddenly, rising on one elbow, eyes blinking out from the dark, hand-dug mine shaft. Rough-hewn post-and-beam construction frames the entrance to the pit, partly obscuring the small cot upon which the creuseur has claimed a moment’s rest, a break from the brain-dulling monotony of hacking at the rock face with mallet and chisel and then, by brute strength, hauling broken ore to the surface, toward the sunlight.

At midday the heat is searing, baking an endless vista of rubble painted in colours of titian and yellow ochre. The treeless moonscape is a 45-minute roller-coaster climb beyond the tiny town of Bisie, itself a nine-hour walk — for the fleet of foot — from the nearest road in the eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Bisie “mine” isn’t really a mine at all, but a cassiterite deposit that has enticed creuseurs like diggers to the Klondike. From pits that run to 100 metres deep and more, miners excavate the ore that ultimately will be smelted to tin by big players in the smelting game, players that reside outside of the Congo. The tin is used not just for cans and containers, but in considerable measure by electronics manufacturers for lead-free solders, forging the link between a mountain in the Congo and shopping malls thousands of kilometres away displaying the latest in smart phones and laptops.

Mining the Congo: From the Earth to the moon – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – June 25, 2011)

July 3, 2011

In the first part of the series Mining the Congo, Jennifer Wells recounts a trek through the Congo toward a remote, cratered mountainside where miners toil.

The heat of the day was coming on. Suspended above a smoky fire a meaty gnarl of antelope, the size of a small ham, twisted lazily. A group of women sat nearby, having lowered their heavy panniers, seeking a moment’s respite.

Mari stood in the umbra of the woodland, her sloe eyes, her round face, a funny little knit cap on her head, tatty pants under a blue and yellow floral piece of cloth that she had tied about her waist. Her pannier of cassava leaves lay at her feet.

Those eyes. They seemed to scan in slow motion before Mari swiftly and dismissively swept the back side of one hand across the palm of the other. “You will not make it to Bisie before nightfall,” she said firmly in Swahili, steadying her gaze not upon photographer Lucas Oleniuk, but upon my determinedly un-weary person. “You will have to sleep in the forest.”

Barrick Gold and North Mara: the search for common ground – by Aaron Regent (Globe and Mail Website – June 22, 2011)

June 22, 2011

Aaron Regent is the president and CEO of Barrick Gold Corp. For Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives at Barrick, go to Beyond Borders.

The relationship between developing countries and Canadian mining companies has been the subject of much discussion in recent weeks and understandably so. As president and CEO of Barrick Gold Corp., it troubles me that events surrounding our company are part of that discussion.

In mid-May, we learned that five people had been killed by Tanzanian police following the invasion of the North Mara mine by as many as 1,500 people. Shortly after, this newspaper reported on our findings that police and security officers may have committed sexual assaults in the area around the mine. Barrick’s revulsion at discovering this evidence is deep. I have seen myself, from the men and women working on the ground to the most senior levels of management, enormous disappointment at these situations and a determination to act.

Barrick will not shy away from the challenges at North Mara, nor diminish them by failing to respond. Where we do encounter safety or human-rights concerns, we will act. We will aggressively investigate allegations of abuse or violence, and we will actively support the investigations of authorities. We will address concerns related to security and the safety risks posed by trespassing.

For South Africa’s sickened gold miners, a long wait for justice – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – June 20, 2011)

June 20, 2011

Apartheid’s Legacy

JOHANNESBURG – His breathing is laboured, his chest is tight, and he is too weak to work in his garden any more. At the age of 63, former mine worker Wilson Mafolwana wonders if he’ll still be alive when justice is done.

He is among the millions of migrant workers who toiled in South Africa’s gold mines in the apartheid era, building the world’s biggest gold industry – and often sacrificing their health in the process. Breathing clouds of dust, usually without ventilation masks, tens of thousands of miners contracted silicosis and tuberculosis, and many are now dying.

Mr. Mafolwana and 17 other ex-miners with silicosis have launched a test case against the South African unit of Anglo American, one of the world’s biggest mining companies, to seek compensation for their illnesses. But the case has dragged on for seven years, with no decision expected until next year at the earliest. While the company fights the lawsuit with all its legal and financial resources, four of the 18 former miners have died. Others grow sicker every day.

Papua New Guinea [Ramu nickel laterite project] and China’s New Empire – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – January 3, 2009)

June 16, 2011

MADANG, Papua New Guinea

When Chinese engineers landed in Papua New Guinea in 2006 to inspect their latest mineral acquisition, they faced an arduous journey through the tropical wilderness. They drove over crumbling roads to the Ramu River, then found natives with dugout canoes to paddle them upstream. Next, they hired another team of locals with machetes to slash a rough trail for eight hours through the steamy jungle, dodging poisonous snakes and malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

“It was terrible,” recalls Wang Chun, the chief engineer. “You couldn’t breathe.”

Today, less than three years later, a series of small Chinatowns has emerged in the jungle — complete with Chinese food, Chinese satellite television channels and crews of Chinese migrant labourers living in cheap dormitory huts. Where once was wilderness, you find the workers of China Metallurgical Group Corp., toiling seven days a week and chattering about their families back home in Beijing and Sichuan.

It hasn’t been easy. The state-owned mining company has dealt with violent clashes with local landowners, striking workers, attacks from the media and unfriendly police who arrested more than 200 Chinese technicians on charges of illegally entering the country.

Our world needs more Peter Munks – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – June 11, 2011)

June 11, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media. mwente@globeandmail.com

Some parts of the world are nastier than Canada. Peter Munk should know. He came from one.

Mr. Munk is the founder and chairman of Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest gold miner. From the day he landed in Toronto from war-torn Europe, he has loved this country with a passion. “I arrived in this place not speaking the language, not knowing a dog,” he says. He was 18 – an alien, a foreigner, a Jew in a funny-looking suit. In Europe, people were living in the ruins, like rats.

The young refugee presented himself at Lawrence Park Collegiate, where nobody had seen a foreigner before. He expected to be shunned. Instead, the principal took him to a sun-filled classroom, where, unbelievably, boys and girls studied together. At lunchtime, everybody streamed into the cafeteria, where a trestle table groaned with meat, bread and milk. “The amount of food in that place could have fed any city in Europe for a whole day,” he recalls. Kids began asking him home, where their parents invited him to raid the fridge.

For Mr. Munk, this generosity became a metaphor for Canada. “People here don’t ask about your origins,” he says, “only about your destiny.”

Today, the company that he founded is embroiled in controversy, and Mr. Munk himself has come under vicious attack. Billionaires and mining giants will never be exempt from criticism, nor should they be. But these attacks are so toxic, they demand a response.