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At the same time, these old mines have huge financial
obligations – largely to their employees, who have often worked in a mine for
30 years or longer. Trade unions are therefore important creditors in the
liquidation of a mine.
The liquidation of a South African gold mine is a profitable
undertaking – a great deal of money is involved, even long after the mine has
ceased production.
In addition, the interests of many people – often several
communities – are affected by it.
Several hundred such mines have already been closed down in
an orderly fashion in South Africa. It's always painful, but it is possible to
do it in such a way that loss and damage are limited as much as possible.
In the past, the process has seldom resulted in such a messy
liquidation as is happening now with Pamodzi.
This usually happens when someone has seen an opportunity
for so-called entrepreneurship (get rich quick).
And when someone gets rich quickly, there is usually someone
else who loses quickly and on a large scale. In mines, the losers are usually
the mineworkers and their families.
That's what happened a few years ago with the provisional
liquidation of DRD's North West mines, Buffelsfontein and Hartbeesfontein. And
this is what it definitely looks like with the liquidation of Pamodzi's mines,
nine shafts of the old Grootvlei mine and seven shafts of the old Orkney mine
near Klerksdorp.
The two mines were stripped bare when Aurora Empowerment
Systems, with shareholders like Zondla Mandela and Khulubuse Zuma, had control
of them for close on two years.
Someone made money out of them – a lot of money.
Mandela and Zuma initially had big plans. They were going to
get a Chinese company, Shang Dong Gold, to buy the mines for R600m to R700m.
After that, more money would be invested to bring the mines
into operation. The capital expenditure, according to them, would be between
R150m and R300m.
But while all these fine announcements were being made,
large trucks with teams of workers and welding equipment dismantled the
enormous steel infrastructure and equipment and carted it away. Now that Aurora
is no longer in control and the famished staff is no longer frightened of them,
dozens of photos of this kind of "entrepreneurship" are coming to
light.
"It looks as if Aurora never had any intention of
entering the mining industry. Their business is actually scrap metal,"
says Gideon du Plessis, deputy head of Solidarity, who realised for the first
time in April last year – seven months after Aurora took over control of the
mines – that the mines were being stripped.
He sent a lawyer's letter to Aurora as early as April 7 last year, in which he pointed out that carbon had been removed from Grootvlei's gold plant and that rigging on one of the shafts had been removed.
Still unpaid for over a year
Aurora was warned that this was illegal, and that an audit
of the assets was going to be made. Since then, he and Frans Baleni, general
secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (Num), have made endless efforts
to prevent the mines being stripped, but they were powerless. Aurora was only
ordered to leave the mine sites two weeks ago.
In this period, the mines had been stripped to the ground.
"The next step is to have Aurora liquidated. Aurora has
to say tomorrow whether they are going to oppose our liquidation application.
If they oppose it, the liquidation will probably only be granted on July
7," Du Plessis said.
Solidarity and the Num are claiming about R3.1m in wages
from Aurora, but there are other creditors - including Eskom - waiting for the
liquidation application on the sidelines before they submit claims.
The directors of Aurora will then be questioned. They will
have to explain what has happened to the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tons
of steel. The same goes for the winders used to raise and lower the heavy skips
in the shafts.
These machines cost R20m to R30m each. A shaft usually has
three winders – one for rock and one for personnel and equipment, while the
third is kept in reserve in case one of the others breaks down.
It now looks as if the winders for most shafts have disappeared.
At the Orkney shafts, it is no longer possible to go
underground, because the power was already cut off long ago.
This could mean that the stripping of these shafts was less
severe than on the East Rand, where even underground equipment was removed.
But the Aurora directors will have good explanations, such
as that they had no choice but to sell the mining equipment and scrap because
they had to pay workers' wages – despite the fact that thousands of workers
have not been paid for more than a year.
There's never much fairness in liquidations, but the liquidation of Pamodzi Gold is exceptionally nasty...
