[miningmx.com] — THE difficulties of managing the complexity of South Africa’s deep-level underground gold mining industry has again been driven to the top of the agenda following Harmony Gold’s announcement on Sunday it had discovered 23 illegal miners at its St Helena mine, a Free State province mine that had been tackling an underground fire for nearly three weeks.
Apart from the extra pressure it places on Graham Briggs, the acting and luckless CEO of Harmony Gold, the incident highlights the difficulty gold company management has containing risks in the country’s sprawling and ever deepening gold mines.
Questions may also be asked as to why Harmony has been unable to control the fire at St Helena for so long.
Last week, Briggs fell under the spotlight after 3,200 miners were trapped, some for more than a day, at Elandsrand, a gold mine Harmony owns south west of Johannesburg. The incident triggered a strong reaction from the South African government with president, Thabo Mbeki, asking his mines minister to spearhead what appears to be a country-wide safety audit on all mines.
Perhaps the extent and dangers of illegal mining can be added to the list of an audit which the government’s mines inspector, Thabo Gazi, claims will be difficult to man, owing to capacity constraints.
Illegal underground mining is possible in South Africa because the inclines and declines that sprout off the country’s many underground gold mining shafts run to tens of kilometres in distance. Moreover, the structure of South Africa’s gold mines is manifold: illegal miners can sneak past security at one mine and exit from another mine owned by a different mining company.
Harmony said the 23 illegal miners were caught in a fire that broke out on September 18 at a disused section of St. Helena. It had only found out that the bodies were there on Sunday, it said. The fire, which has yet to be put out, shut the mine down for one day and night shift. Harmony said no staff had been harmed.
Although endemic in the industry, the focus of the illegal underground miners, sometimes sensationally referred to as pirates, appears to be a particular problem at Harmony.
In a Miningmx report dated May 12, 2006, then Harmony spokesman Philip Kotze said catching thieves was made difficult by the labyrinth through which contiguous mines are connected. “Syndicates can enter Brand 3 shaft and emerge at St Helena – about 10km away,’ he said.
His comments came on the heels of a report by the Institute for Security Services (ISS), and commissioned by the Chamber of Mines of SA, which found that more than 50 “pirate miners’ stayed underground at one of Harmony’s Free State mines.
Accomplices on the surface supplied the men with food and even delivered post. The report said gold worth R1.8bn was stolen from South Africa’s mines every year.
“We were always aware of gangs operating on the mines,’ said David Davis, an analyst at Credit Suisse Standard Securities at the time. “They were always up to all sorts of devious ways of removing gold from the [metallurgical] plant,’ he said.
