SA’s gold industry nears end of decades-long death spiral
Dwindling output, low profitability portends bleak future for the shiny metal
SA’s gold mining industry is locked in the final stages of a decades-long death spiral, with many of the country’s gold mines unprofitable at current prices. Back in 1987, President Cyril Ramaphosa — then a 34-year-old labour union leader — led 300,000 black miners in a strike that symbolised resistance to the apartheid regime. Now, striking gold workers face a less politically charged battle, but one they can’t win. The nation’s 130-year-old gold industry — which has produced half the bullion ever mined on earth — is facing increasingly difficult times and a bleak future. Dwindling output has cut gold’s contribution to little more than 1% of the South African economy, down from 3.8% in 1993 — the year before Nelson Mandela’s ANC won the country’s first democratic elections. While the industry’s demise won’t reverberate in the way it once would have, the mineral resources minister has criticised Gold Fields’s plan to cut jobs as the governing ANC seeks to shore up its base before el...
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