Gold Mining in South Africa

South Africa is one of the world leaders in gold mining with the largest gold resources in the world found in the area of the Witwatersrand. The capital Johannesburg is also known as the “City Of Gold” and is referred to as “Eggoli” Mining for gold started in South Africa a few years after the first diamonds were found and in 1887 Johannesburg found new settlers filling up to mine the gold. There were very rich results and the Rand mines were notably the richest. The diamond millionaires of Kimberly quickly moved into Johannesburg making it their headquarters. This brought about Johannesburg growing to be an important and the largest city in the whole of South Africa.
From those ancient times up until 1989 more that 40% of all the gold mined were produced from the South African mines. It had been the basis of prosperity for a long time and at least half a million of the South African population came to rely on the industry. Gold production by 1970 had reached a 1000 tonnes which was more than 70per cent of the production of the Non-Communist world and still remains the world’s largest gold producer.
Gold in South Africa is found in depths as much as 3900 m found embedded in stone. It is no easy task to mine at these depths as conditions can become problematic with temperatures rising 1 degree at every 33 meters. Even though the geo-thermal conditions are favorable in South Africa a vast amount of air-conditioning and machinery are needed to adjust the temperatures to around 32 degrees and make it tolerable and have the workers coping with almost 100 percent of humidity.
The cost of operation of these deep mines is colossal as vast volumes of water have to be pumped out on a daily basis and new cooling and refrigeration systems make over 20,000 tonnes of ice a day which has to be crushed and pumped along the pipes running through the galleries of the mine. Then when the water gets warmed it has to pump it back to the surface.
Mostly members of the black National Union of Mineworkers are employed in the mines and count to several hundred thousands working underground. Half the production cost of the mine goes to pay wages. Even so, the Union is pressing forward for social and political reforms, better wage structure and better conditions in the work place.   
South African gold fell into a slump in the late 1980s and the quality began to slowly drop with the gold produced from 1970 to 1990 falling by 40%. Many factors contributed to this and it became a very expensive operation. The price of gold dropped to $250/oz in 1999 which caused the Gold companies to sit up and reorganize their operations by streamlining the labor intensive and costly operations.  This paid off in 2000 when the price reach $290 by then the entire global gold industry had undergone dramatic changes.
 

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