We are only 178 days into the year and already 21 workers have died at Sibanye-Stillwater’s mines. That’s a staggering number. It’s hard to imagine many jurisdictions that would tolerate having in its midst a company in which an employee was killed at his or her place of work virtually every week. Neither should we. And here we are not talking about an insignificant player, but the biggest company in an industry where SA used to be the leading global player. Gold mining, which dates back to the 19th century and is probably the most important contributor to the fact that about 10-million people now call the city of Johannesburg home, has long lost its status as the most important player in the South African economy. For decades SA was synonymous with gold, and the country was the largest producer in the world. We are now barely in the top 10 and employment levels, at around 116,000, are down almost 70% from what they were in the mid-1990s. The country was barely a feature when AngloG...
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