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For six days, a search party went down into the earth’s belly to comb through dark tunnels in an attempt to find a “missing mine worker” who did not want to be found.
While the drama unfolded underground, Implats – the world’s second largest platinum producer after Amplats – had already halted production.
Nothing could be done until the missing employee had been accounted for, leading to a week’s production lost. That is equivalent to approximately 1 000 ounces of platinum worth nearly R16 million, according to Implats spokesperson Johan Theron.
It all started last Friday when Bongani Giba, who is employed by MMM – a mining company contracted by Implats at Shaft 9 – failed to make it to the surface, leading to immediate panic over his safety.
“We stopped everything when we realised that our access system had not registered him as having exited the shaft. We could not do anything until he had been accounted for,” said Theron.
Some believed that he could have taken incorrect routes, ended up in disused tunnels and become lost in the maze of alleys underground.
However, it has come to light that, while everyone was concerned that he could be in danger and without food as the days passed, he was in fact running away from those who were praying to find him alive.
The “missing” man – a rock driller – was part of a team that goes down to bore holes in the rock walls, where explosives are inserted.
Once everyone has been cleared out of sections to be blasted, a button would be pressed.
Large rock walls are reduced to mountains of rubble, which is gathered by the next shift and conveyed to the surface for processing to yield platinum and other minerals such as nickel and chrome.
With one employee missing, no blasting could take place.
When finally found, the missing mine worker was in the company of another man, who is not a mine employee. Both were handcuffed immediately after it turned out that they were alleged copper cable thieves.
While production at Implats was expected to return to normal soon, the mine will not only be counting its losses in production, but some added losses owing to a huge problem faced by mining companies in South Africa – cable theft.
City Press spoke to a mine worker at Shaft 9, who cannot be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.
The worker explained how the “missing man” was caught.
He said while the search went on underground, security personnel installed CCTV cameras at shaft stations and exit areas, suspecting that he could be part of a group of copper cable thieves.
They carefully monitored every person coming in and out of the station and spotted him with piles of cable as he waited for a lift. “That’s how he was caught.”
This serves as confirmation to platinum mines that their own employees are in cahoots with copper cable syndicates.
Mine workers who spoke to City Press said it was common knowledge that some of their colleagues had ways of not ascending to the surface after their shifts.
They can spend days underground “harvesting copper cables”.
“They either use emergency exit points to enter, or bribe lift operators to get them down the shaft. This is a highly organised crime syndicate. They have their own ways of taking the cable loot to surface,” another mine worker said.
National Union of Mineworkers health and safety secretary Eric Gcilitshana said cable theft was “quick money in the platinum belt”.
“Unlike gold, which is easy to clean and sell, platinum needs a large quantity of rock to get something solid, and the processing is a challenge.
So the common crime in platinum mines is cable theft. Also, scrap yards don’t ask questions – they just weigh and pay. It is all quick money,” Gcilitshana said.
He said cable theft was a big problem that the mining sector seemingly downplayed, and that it was particularly rife in the platinum belt.
