Platinum: A whole new universe awaits

(Published in Deep SA, August 2012)

By Stef Terblanche

When a Hollywood movie-maker, an internet whiz kid, some space and computer scientists, a Texas billionaire, and a few other very wealthy people got together in April and told the world they were preparing to go into space to mine platinum on near-earth asteroids in quantities that would make South Africa look silly, one expected the world to take note.

And it did. Their announcement was carried in more than 2,000 news articles around the world in the days that followed.

Only, many of these took a tongue-in-cheek stance and seemed to dismiss them as a bunch of publicity-seeking crazies.

Publicity they may certainly have sought, but crazy they were not. In fact they – collectively going under the banner of a company called Planetary Resources – are dead serious in their quest to raise the necessary billions of dollars needed, develop the appropriate technology, mine the asteroids for vast quantities of platinum and create the world’s first trillionaires.

One also expected South Africa and its circle of blue-chip platinum miners to respond. After all, with them presiding over 75% of the world’s currently known platinum group reserves, the announcement by Planetary Resources potentially threatens this monopoly.

But either they shared the notion that these were crazy people, or they were busy with other far more depressing things, like simply trying to survive while preparing interim results in a very negative market. Most likely the latter.

As Northam Platinum spokesperson Memory Johnstone put it: “South African platinum companies are not really looking into that (space mining) right now, they are more concerned with just surviving at the moment. Platinum prices are down at the moment, so concerning themselves with space exploration for platinum is not really something they will consider right now.”

True, South African platinum group metals (PGM) production is down 25%, much of it due to labour unrest; the platinum price has fallen more than 16% over the past year and continues to slide; costs continue going up; executives of these mining companies have been facing something of a shakeup; and share prices have plummeted.

So when Planetary Resources made their announcement at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, South Africa’s platinum bosses probably were far too busy to be bothered.

Nonetheless, the ambitious US-based start-up company has formidable backing, and is dead serious. In fact, they have quietly been working at their plans for over two years now. In their announcement in Seattle - aimed at attracting investors and “the best brains” out there to participate in the venture - the group said that there are 9,000 asteroids larger than 50 meters in diameter in orbit near the earth. Some of them could "contain as much platinum as is mined in an entire year on earth”, they claimed.

And Planetary Resources is in a hurry to get to that vast orbiting treasure chest. It has committed itself to having its first prospecting telescopes in space within 24 months.

The players

Planetary Resources boasts a formidable A-list team of founders and funders, among them –

•     James Cameron, the Canadian film director-producer and deep-sea explorer who made the box-office hit “Titanic”;

•     Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the billionaire computer scientists who founded Google;

•     Eric Schmidt, an American businessman,  software engineer and the current executive chairman of Google;

•     Peter Diamandis, the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation who is widely held to be a key figure in the development of the personal or private spaceflight industry and who has created many space-related businesses and organisations;

•     Eric Anderson, a leading space industry entrepreneur who has led the development of commercial human spaceflight and the space tourism industry, selling more than $250 million in spaceflights including South African software billionaire Mark Shuttleworth’s space trip;

•     Chris Lewicki, a former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Mars mission manager;

•     Tom Jones, a planetary scientist and veteran NASA astronaut;

•     Charles Simonyi, the chairman of Intentional Software Corporation and Microsoft's former chief software architect;

•     K. Ram Shriram, the founder of Sherpalo and a founding director of Google; and

•     Ross Perot Jnr, Texas billionaire and chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group, whose father once ran for president.

One could hardly ask for more “heavyweight” than that, which is why sane and influential people everywhere should be taking serious note of their announcement.

In an interview with Space.com, Anderson said, "We are going to the source. ...The platinum group metals are many orders of magnitude easier to access in the high-concentration platinum asteroids than they are in the Earth's Crust."

It may be mere ironic coincidence, or a case of Hollywood-meets-reality, but it was co-founder and funder Cameron who wrote and directed the 2009 hit movie “Avatar” in which a fictitious precious metal called "unobtainium" is mined on Pandora, a fictional, lush habitable moon in the Alpha Centauri star system.

The technology

In developing the required technology, the group certainly has the right credentials with several of its members being aeronautical and computer scientists and engineers. Some of them previously worked on space programmes of NASA.

For now Planetary Resources will be focusing on robotic space exploration and getting exploration telescopes into place. In the course of the next two years the group hopes to launch between two and five space-based Arkyd-101 Space Telescopes that will be used for exploration to find the asteroids most feasible for mining.

The next phase – within five to seven years - would involve launching spacecraft with a more specific prospecting agenda to map out an asteroid in detail and identifying potential, relevant geological characteristics.

The third phase, within five to ten years, would see the company going from prospecting to actual extraction by the building small, relatively low-cost space craft to carry robots to the asteroids. These will mine them and bring back to earth the mined and refined platinum ore.

As the asteroids are believed to contain substantial quantities of water, the group intends using the water’s hydrogen and oxygen to create “fuel stations” in space to refuel the space craft to be used in the venture. This could also benefit NASA’s spacecraft involved in deep space exploration.

Planetary Resource hopes to launch its first spacecraft within 24 months.

The team says it will be making good use of technology already developed such as that used to take Cameron to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to film the sunken wreck of the Titanic, or the robotic technology used by petroleum company Shell to access oil in some of the deepest oceans.

Planetary Resources believes its initial customers are likely to include private research institutes and agencies like NASA.

The NASA fit

In fact, Planetary Resources’ plans seem to fit quite well with NASA’s own future plans. With NASA now retiring its space shuttle fleet and shifting its focus to deep space exploration, it will increasingly rely on private companies to build transport craft for cargo and crew and transport these to the orbiting International Space Station.

General Charles Bolden, the head of NASA, told me in an interview conducted with him when he visited Cape Town late last year that “one of the important challenges that NASA has from the National Space Act that established us in 1958 was to promote commerce and industry”.

“We just recently decided on a heavy-lift launch vehicle for example. We decided that we are going to rely on industry itself to build and operate space aircraft going into low orbit, taking both cargo and crew. That is a totally new industry that will grow up, hopefully not just in the United States.”

“One of the reasons why we think it is very important for us to now allow American industry to take over owning and operating the vehicles that go into lower earth orbit because we in America have been doing that now continuously for 30 years with a couple of interruptions when we lost Columbia and Challenger.”

“The shuttle programme was an incredible thirty-year technological era that I don’t think will be matched for quite some time but at the expense of not allowing us to explore, to go beyond lower earth orbit. So President Obama decided that we should follow along with the recommendations from previous administrations and turn over access to lower earth orbit to the commercial enterprises, and let us do the (deep space) exploration,” said Bolden.

Space prospecting

Exploration and distance prospecting of this kind is not quite new. In fact already back in 2000, Brad Blair of the Colorado School of Mines’ produced a paper on near-earth asteroids having a role to play in long-term platinum supply. He followed this with a paper in 2002 entitled “Space Resource Economic Analysis Toolkit: The Case for Commercial Lunar Ice Mining.”

Blair is described by colleagues as “dedicated to opening the space frontier for human settlement and commerce”, something he has been researching for over twenty years. He is also a professional space consultant to NASA, Bechtel Nevada, Raytheon and the Canadian Space Agency.

According to Blair high-grade PGM concentrations have been identified in so-called LL Chrondrite near-earth asteroids. He argues in his paper that space-based PGM sources will become available commercially over the next few decades owing to the technology growth that allows increased human activity in near-earth space.

He further argues – in line with what Planetary Resources are saying – that PGM deposits on asteroids will be sufficient to create its own viable economy. Until now iron meteorite samples have yielded evidence of substantial platinum deposits.

“Future economic work should include econometric estimation of short- and long-term demand elasticity for platinum, and extend the above analysis to the other platinum-group metals offered by asteroids,” says Blair.

“The breakthrough for space resources will come about when a sufficiently large market is found that justifies mining from a lower cost mineral source located in space. “The most commonly cited potential market is transportation fuels for earth-orbiting vehicles.”

The market

Planetary Resources does not shy away from the anticipated cost of the scheme which it says will run into billions of dollars. But, it says, the return will be an addition of “tens of billions of dollars to the US’ GDP annually." The company nonetheless hopes to bring down substantially the hitherto cost of visiting asteroids of between $1-billion and $2-billion.

The question is whether the platinum market can afford near-space mining. At present earth still has an abundance of platinum and PGMs certainly are not part of the current resource pinch.

An article in The Economist argued that “PGMs are expensive because they are rare. Make them common, by digging them out of the heart of a shattered planet, and they will become cheap.”

But Planetary Resources PGMs are high-priced simply because they are being used to narrowly. By expanding their application across more technology and industries because of greater supplies being available, will keep prices at viable levels, they argue.

And that is also what both the government and leaders in the mining industry in South Africa seem to think. In fact South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is already thinking of creating a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) focused solely on platinum development.

The DTI’s director-general, Lionel October, has been quoted as saying that a DTI team was already engaging with various people to establish whether a central platinum hub with satellite zones would be economically viable.

PGMs have many wonderful uses. Platinum is used as a catalyst in fuel cells, and development of hydrogen fuel cells could open up a whole new world of clean energy, it is thought.

Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll also told the United Nations climate change convention’s seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP 17) in Durban last December that by developing these fuel cells zero-emission electricity could be produced creating many new jobs and opening up all sorts of other opportunities.

Experts say the fuel cell technology derived from platinum can be used for a range of applications, from powering cell phones, to driving vehicles and even generating power in isolated locations, meaning there might just be a market able to absorb what Planetary Resources hopes to bring back to earth.

Anglo leads the way with fuel cell technology

Tomorrow’s power for today’s challenges

(Published in Mining, September 2012)

By Stef Terblanche

Turning challenge into opportunity may seem like a favourite cliché of motivational speakers and spin practitioners. But for South Africa’s mining industry it has become something of a survival tool, if not a way of life going all the way back to the early pioneering days of the diamond and gold rushes.

A national power crisis, rising costs, depressed market conditions, the need for jobs, regulatory and transformation issues, and switching to a greener economy are just some of the challenges faced by the mining industry.

To see how the industry responds to such pressures one need only look at the many innovative initiatives undertaken by mining companies in the wake of the 2008 power crisis.

One of these is the exciting work Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) is doing in conjunction with various partners and government in the field of platinum-based hydrogen fuel cell technology.

With just this one project issues such as stimulating demand for platinum, creating jobs, cleaner energy sources, energy self-sufficiency, environmental concerns, new technologies, mineral beneficiation, sustainable mining and more are being simultaneously addressed.

Anglo’s work in this regard started attracting wider attention when the company demonstrated a 150kw platinum-based hydrogen fuel cell power plant at the UN’s COP17 climate change conference in Durban last December. This was followed in May with Amplats announcing that it had launched the prototype of the first fuel cell powered locomotive for use in underground mining operations.

“This event marks a leap forward for fuel cells. The platinum-based hydrogen fuel cells, used to power the locomotive we are unveiling today, offer one of the most exciting opportunities for South Africa in the green economy. At Anglo American, we believe that with platinum at its heart, a South African fuel cell industry would support the country’s drive for jobs and help to meet its energy challenges,” enthused Cynthia Carroll, Chief Executive of Anglo American plc and Chairperson of Amplats at the launch.

In due course five fuel cell locomotives are to be produced and tested underground.

What are fuel cells?

Many people may be unfamiliar with this somewhat mysterious sounding “new” technology that promises to be the answer to so many things. So just what exactly is fuel cell technology?

The technology is not really that new, nor is it very complicated in theory. German scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein first developed the principle of the fuel cell in 1838.

A year later the Welsh scientist Sir William Robert Grove published an article about it in the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. In 1889 two chemists, Charles Langer and Ludwig Mond first used the term “fuel cell” to describe the device they had built using air and coal gas.

Their device was developed further by Cambridge scientist Dr Francis Thomas Bacon in 1932 into what was essentially the first alkaline fuel cell. Twenty years later various scientists undertook further development of the technology and by the 1980s car manufacturers, among others, started showing an interest in it.

In 1993 the Canadian Ballard company produced the first commercially viable fuel cell-powered vehicle. In 1997, Daimler-Chrysler, Ford and Ballard Power Systems formed a consortium to build fuel cell engines and drive trains for cars. In 2004 30 fuel cell buses built by DaimlerChrysler and Ballard went into service in Europe.

Today the diverse applications for fuel cells have included purpose-built vehicles, hospitals, schools, rural electrification, back-up power for telecommunications, combined heat and power applications for residential, commercial and industrial buildings, portable power and battery charging, and even in city buses. Many large vehicle manufacturers have fuel cell research and development projects these days.

According to information supplied by Mpumi Sithole, Media & External Relations Manager at Amplats, a fuel cell is essentially a gas battery that produces electricity as long as it is fed with hydrogen gas. It is a device that uses hydrogen (or hydrogen-rich fuel) and oxygen to create electricity.

They are more energy-efficient than combustion engines, as they extract more energy from the same amount of fuel, says the company.

Depending on the purity of the hydrogen used as fuel, emission of air pollutants or greenhouse gases may be zero or very little. The amount of power produced by a fuel cell depends on fuel cell type, cell size, operating temperature and pressure at which the gases are supplied to the cell, among other things.

Fuel cells have been used to provide auxiliary power on spacecraft for decades. They also have a broader range of application than any other currently available power source, says Amplats. Furthermore, fuel cells provide round-the-clock availability without any need to change or recharge batteries, which means less downtime and increased productivity.

The Smithsonian Institution describes a fuel cell as generating electricity by a chemical reaction taking place in two electrodes, the positive anode and negative cathode. Every fuel cell also has an electrolyte, which carries electrically charged particles from one electrode to the other, and a catalyst, which speeds the reactions at the electrodes.

The electrical current thus produced is directed outside the cell to power a motor or illuminate a light bulb, for instance.

While basic fuel cell technology is relatively simple to illustrate, building inexpensive, efficient, and reliable fuel cells is a different matter altogether. The biggest current obstacle to fuel cell commercialisation is the high cost, says Amplats partner Johnson Matthey.

Many different types of fuel cells have been developed, with differing technical details for each, much of it centred on the choice of electrolyte.

The main electrolyte types currently being used are alkali, molten carbonate, phosphoric acid, proton exchange membrane and solid oxide. Different types of fuel used also require different designs. Platinum catalysts are used in most types of fuel cells.

Suited to Africa

According to Amplats, fuel cells are well suited to the provision of distributed power in Africa. The attractiveness of fuel cells is that their most efficient fuel source, hydrogen, is an energy carrier and can be stored. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and any hydrogen-rich liquid or gaseous fuel can be used to provide the hydrogen for a fuel cell. Fuel cells can be deployed where they are needed, and use whatever fuels are available locally.

Amplats’ partner in the locomotive project, the US company Vehicle Projects Inc, has successfully developed a number of fuel cell vehicles in the US.

“A fuel cell locomotive incorporates the advantages of its competitors, namely catenary-electric and diesel-electric units, while avoiding their disadvantages. It possesses the environmental benefits, at the vehicle, of an electric locomotive but the higher overall efficiency and lower infrastructure costs of a diesel locomotive,” says Dr. Arnold Miller, who heads Vehicle Projects.

Miller was in South Africa in September to present a paper on the project at the Platinum conference of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy at Sun City.

Dr Miller says the hydrogen for the locomotives would be produced on site on the surface at the mine and piped down to the underground locomotive for refuelling.

“For underground vehicles reversible metal hydride storage is the preferred type based on safety considerations. Reversible metal hydrides are low flammability, solid materials that use metal hydrogen chemical bonds to store hydrogen safely and compactly,” he says.

Amplats says fuel cells are relatively new in Africa with the complete value chain still under development and presenting significant opportunities for manufacture, assembly, installation, support, maintenance and fuel supply.

“At Anglo American, we believe that with platinum at its heart, a South African fuel cell industry would support the country’s drive for jobs and help to meet its energy challenges,” Carroll said. The company believes it will also promote knowledge transfer and export opportunities.

It stands to reason that Amplats would be focusing on new technologies involving the use of platinum, especially given the current downturn in the sector. After all, Amplats is the world’s top primary platinum producer, having contributed 42% of global supply in 2010.

The company says it is implementing its fuel cell strategy in order to drive demand for platinum group metals (PGM’s), specifically in South Africa.

“This is aligned to government’s beneficiation strategy of moving from an extractive economy to adding value where viable, and to potentially creating a new fuel cell industry,” it says.

Partners

Amplats has teamed up with various research, technology and manufacturing partners such as Vehicle Projects, Trident South Africa, Battery Electric, Johnson Matthey, Air Products, Doking, Dantherm and Clean Energy. The company has also established the Platinum Group Metals Development Fund (PGMDF) towards expanding industrialisation and beneficiation of PMGs. And it is also collaborating with the South African government.

The company believes fuel cell technology as a strategic and emerging industry is well aligned with the vision of the Department of Science and Technology and the company is working together with the Departments of Mineral Resources and of Science and Technology to encourage and support greater local beneficiation of platinum.

In fact the Department of Trade and Industry is already thinking of creating a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) focused solely on platinum development.

The DTI’s director-general, Lionel October, was quoted in one report as saying that a DTI team was already engaging with various people to establish whether a central platinum hub with satellite zones would be economically viable in line with the government’s Special Economic Zone Bill gazetted in January. The government was hoping through the licensing of SEZs it could industrialise outlying rural areas, attract foreign investment and boost job creation.

More projects

The fuel cell power plant demonstrated at COP17 and the fuel cell locomotive project, are but two of Amplats’ current projects.

A stationary 200kw fuel cell power plant installed near Lephalele in Limpopo on a Coal Bed Methane (CBM) site of Anglo American’s Thermal Coal business is used to provide electricity for the exploration operations in the area.

And a 50kw platinum based fuel cell was used to power Anglo American’s recent Mining Indaba gala dinner, held at Vergelegen Wine Estate in Cape Town. In conjunction with the SA government’s Hydrogen Economy Strategy (HYSA) Amplats also supports research in fuel cell related technologies in developing competence and capability locally.

Amplats and partners use these projects to demonstrate and showcase the fuel cell technology developed to date and the opportunities it could create for mining and the South African economy in general.

Focus on mining

Amplats has also initiated a “Fuel Cells in Mining” programme to investigate, develop, and pilot technologies that could improve current mining practices and where viable, adopt the technology. In this vein, for example, the fuel cell locomotive project aims to produce a fuel cell/battery hybrid that will operate more effectively and efficiently than current lead acid batteries.

“Technology is core to our approach to carbon reduction and energy saving activities. We have invested $180 million in low carbon technology. We are investing in technologies that will enable us to run cost efficient, carbon neutral mines in 20 years' time,” said Carroll.

Another project involves the development of the Dozer, a remote driven machine that performs a variety of functions in the underground environment that enhances the productivity and safety of miners.  And the Mining Cap Lamp project aims to produce a lamp that is as efficient in lighting as current products whilst providing a lighter more durable product that has an easy refilling mechanism to reduce overall costs.

Amplats, in conjunction with Dantherm, a Ballard subsidiary, is also investigating the opportunity and viability of providing fuel cell technology to power in-house residential housing projects.

But there are also challenges to the Amplats drive to promote the wider use of platinum through fuel cell technology. Last year scientists from the US-based Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory published a paper claiming they had developed the use of a platinum-free catalyst in the cathode of a hydrogen fuel cell.

Having to use platinum catalysts has been singled out as one of the major factors contributing to the high cost of hydrogen fuel cells that has thwarted widespread use.

Nonetheless, it remains an exciting project and any challenges are likely to be met head on and overcome.

Some current global fuel cell technology developments

•                    Fuel cell technology is now so important that the US Senate now boasts a dedicated Senate Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Caucus with 4 co-chairs.

•                    Five hydrogen fuel cell taxis were built to transport VIPs during the recent Olympics in London.

•                    Danish car builders’ consortium ECOmove has unveiled an electric car able to travel 500 miles without refuelling.

•                    Mercedes-Benz in the US has purchased 72 fuel cell units to operate a portion of its Alabama plant’s lift truck fleet.

•                    Boeing is partnering with American Airlines and the US Federal Aviation Administration on a 737-800 airplane project as a flying test bed for environmentally progressive technologies, including fuel cell technology.

•                    South Korea’s Pyeongtaek Energy Service purchased 14 UTC Power fuel cell systems for energy supply purposes.

•                    California-based Life Technologies Corporation has installed a 1 MW Bloom Energy fuel cell system to power its company headquarters and other buildings.

•                    US company FuelCell Energy, Inc. was awarded a $3.8 million contract by the US Navy to develop and test a fuel cell power system for underwater propulsion.

•                    A major US defence supplier has ordered a 25-watt fuel cell  for testing in the use of a range of applications including soldier power, remote power stations, and unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles.

•                    NASA’s Kennedy Space Center entered a five-year Space Act Agreement with Cella Energy’s American subsidiary to make its micro-bead technology practical enough to be used as a fuel in most kinds of machinery, cars and even spacesuits and portable electronics.

Media - No clean hands as a bloody “war of ideas” looms

(Published in Leadership Intelligence Bulletin - Online newsletter of Leadership magazine)

By Stef Terblanche

The African National Congress (ANC) has published its Mangaung national conference resolutions on its website – including one that reopened the issue of transforming and regulating the media. Within hours it triggered much reaction. Some say the ANC is just paying lip service to its media resolution and its proposed parliamentary investigation of the media will come to nothing. But there appears to be much more to this complex issue fraught with pitfalls than meets the eye, with neither the ANC nor the media being as innocent or well-intentioned as they claim.

The battle over the role, control, and freedom of the media, or the battle of ideas as the ANC calls it, has been long in the making. The ANC government is also by far not the first in South Africa to clash with a media it perceives to be hostile.

But the current battle started in 2007 when the ANC’s national conference in Polokwane raised the possible establishment of a media appeals tribunal (MAT) that could "strengthen, complement and support" existing self-regulatory institutions and measures.  The issue triggered fierce debate and the media and various analysts attacked the proposal as an attempt to curb press freedom. At the time the ANC government was being increasingly embarrassed by media exposés of corruption in its ranks, while unsavoury media coverage of the affairs of the man who would soon become president, Jacob Zuma, was also on the rise. At the time Zuma was still facing corruption charges.

The battle intensified in the months that followed and the debate widened to include the ANC’s charge that monopolistic ownership of the media continued to vest largely in white hands. In fact, the ANC says black media ownership in South Africa stands at a paltry 14%.

At the same time the suspicions of those opposing possible state or political control of the media were heightened when the ANC reintroduced the highly controversial Protection of State Information Bill in 2010. Critics of the bill and a diverse range of organisations and campaigns that mobilised against it argued that it would stifle media freedom to expose corruption or other illegal activities within organs of state among other things.

The media itself is to blame for much of the pressure on it for transformation and regulation. Twice the media tried to act pre-emptively, and twice it failed to follow through on its own efforts.

First, responding to the ANC’s demand for a MAT, the Print Media SA (PMSA) and the SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) set up the Press Freedom Commission (PFC) in 2011 to find ways of improving self-regulation and avoid the imposition of a state-controlled MAT.

The commission of nine persons from outside the media community chaired by former Chief Justice Pius Langa delivered a report last year on how self-regulation could be improved. The ANC participated in the PFC’s hearings and later said it was quite satisfied with its recommendations.

But then the media was caught napping. The media itself was slow to implement the PFC’s recommendations, showing a preference for some, rejecting others, or appearing to merely be going through the motions on some. The Press Council, for instance, said it had revamped itself, but to outsiders it would appear as little more than window dressing.

Perceiving implementation by the mainstream media of its own recommendations to be slow, the ANC revived the idea of having parliament look at introducing a MAT.  At its 53^rd national conference in Mangaung in December the ANC adopted its resolution called “Communications and the Battle of Ideas”.

This latest ANC resolution broadened the scope of possible state interference in the affairs of the media considerably. It now called for the following:

•                    The adoption of a media charter to regulate and transform the media and promote black economic empowerment in  the sector;

•                    That parliament conduct an inquiry on the desirability and feasibility of a MAT, which includes the PFC recommendations, a review of existing media accountability mechanisms, reviewing the balance between individual  rights and those of the media, and a review of laws dealing with privacy, libel and defamations. (In the past the ANC complained bitterly that the media was trespassing badly in this area with reports on the affairs of President Zuma, for instance);

•                    Strengthening the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) to support more community and commercial entities;

•                    Calling on the Competition Commission (CC) to focus on anti-competitive practices within the sector; and

•                    Transforming the advertising industry to ensure its contribution to media diversity must be prioritized.

The ANC’s current focus is primarily on all facets of the mainstream print media including its printing and distribution operations, but also to a lesser degree on the advertising industry and on the “new media” (online and mobile platform media). Till now the print media has been self-regulated by its own Press Council; the advertising industry by its own Advertising Standards Authority (ASA); and the new media to some extent by the Online Publishing Association (OPA). The major online newspapers, however, are also owned by the big four print media groups.

The electronic and broadcast media are already regulated by a statutory body, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa). The ANC and independent researchers view this sector as being the most transformed one.

The MDDA is a development agency for promoting media development and diversity, a partnership between the South African Government and major print and broadcasting media companies to assist in (amongst others) developing community and small commercial media, in terms of the MDDA Act of 2002. In this sector too there has been large-scale transformation to black ownership and control.

When the ANC late last year stepped up its call for transformation of the print media, the owners of the major media publishing houses organised as the Print and Digital Media of SA (PDMSA) again tried to stave off government action. They opted for self-transformation by establishing the Print and Digital Media Transformation Task Team (PDMTTT).

This attempt however also does not seem set for success. The PDMSA already stated its opposition to a media charter, which sets it on a collision course with the ANC. And it has displayed little enthusiasm for the work of its own transformation task team.

Only a few hearings have been held, while one of the major members of the PDMSA, the Caxton group, recently withdrew from the process because of the Competition Commission’s investigation into monopolistic practices in the media. And the media houses have not called for public participation, nor have they communicated in any depth in their own newspapers the issues involved or the processes they have embarked on.

The ANC believes the big four print media groups, namely Naspers, Avusa, Caxton and the foreign owned Independent Group, still dominate the entire value chain of the market in this sector including printing, distribution and advertising. This it views as the biggest barrier to market entry for other media players and the ANC says it shows possible anti-competitive behaviour. Hence the call for the Competition Commission to investigate.

The commission is already investigating suspected anti-competitive behaviour by Caxton, Naspers, Times Media Group and Independent Newspapers. That there are problems in this area is quite clear from the commission’s 2011-12 annual report, which gives the example of a case of “predatory pricing” by Media24 (Naspers). The commission  found that Media24 had used its two Free State goldfields titles, Vista and Forum, to squeeze out an independent newspaper called Gold-Net News by charging businesses below-cost advertising rates, thus “making it impossible for Gold-Net to compete for the business of advertisers, and eventually forcing it to exit the market in April 2009.”

The ANC on the other hand has also not come quite clean with a credible explanation for its quest to control and transform the media.

It does not have what it would consider being significant influence with the main print media players in South Africa, being Media24, Caxton, Avusa and Independent Newspapers. A new ANC-friendly newspaper, The New Age, was launched by the Gupta family which is close to President Zuma and other senior ANC members. However, despite recent reports of vast sums of public funds being channelled to The New Age, the paper has not made a sufficient enough dent on the circulation front for it to divulge its actual circulation and readership figures.

The MDDA in 2009 released a report based on research it had commissioned on the trends of ownership and control of the South African media. It is this report which the ANC rather selectively quotes when it puts ownership of the media by blacks, or “historically disadvantaged individuals”, at 14%.

To arrive at accurate figures of ownership depends on what categories of media are included and how it is calculated, bearing in mind also that some of the figures may have changed since the 2009 release of the study. Ownership data also differ immensely from one media group to another. For instance, Media24 has 15 HDI shareholding, Caxton 0% and Avusa 25.5%.  Independent is wholly foreign-owned as therefore also has 0% HDI shareholding.

Together the HDI shareholding of the big four groups amounts to an average of 10.1%. Without Independent Newspapers it is 13.4%. Should Primedia be added as the fifth major print media player with its 50% HDI shareholding, the average for the five groups is 18.1% HDI ownership.

On the other hand, if the so-called independent media players – smaller regional and community publications or single-newspaper publishers – are included, there are at least 206 out of the estimated 469 newspaper titles published countrywide, who have HDI shareholding, pushing the average total up to around 44%.  There are also close to 70 smaller newspapers that are 100% owned by HDI shareholders.

Another anomaly is the fact that HDI shareholding is not always considered to be the same as black shareholding. For instance, The Mail and Guardian has 87.5% black ownership, but 0% HDI ownership because the black owner of the newspaper is a naturalised South African originally from Zimbabwe who is not considered to be an HDI owner.

The bottom line is that any breakdown of the numbers involved in the transformation of media ownership in South Africa along the above lines is open to manipulation to suit a particular viewpoint. It is clear that the ANC’s primary interest is in the big four print media groups who control the influential major newspapers in South Africa, and not in the other largely transformed sectors. It is here where the ANC believes, in its own words, that the “war of ideas must be fought like a real war”.

The government also already controls a massive state media sector by virtue of the SABC and the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS). Through these and through friendly smaller newspapers as well as the ANC’s own internal communications and political structures the party quite adequately gets its message across to the voting masses.

But with literacy rising, urbanisation increasing and a new generation of better educated voters emerging, the ANC may perceive a real need to change the control and news content of the “anti-ANC” mainstream print media.

This is evident too from the ideological tone of its Mangaung resolution. Apart from the war talk already mentioned, the ANC says things like –

-          “the battle of ideas is being waged between the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the democratic developmental state and neo liberal paradigm”;

-          “his ideological battle is being waged mainly through the market forces which seek to dislodge the democratic forces as the drivers of change and to substitute the objectives of the national democratic revolution (NDR) with a neo-liberal market driven paradigm”;

-          a national dialogue is needed to “reignite and deepen the battle of ideas” to, amongst others, “reassert the position of the ANC as a progressive leader of society”; and

-          that, with reference to the four main media groups, “the print media existed for many years as one of the pillars of the apartheid” and is still trapped in the patterns and behaviour of the apartheid era.

Following the ANC’s publication of its conference resolutions recently, the press ombudsman, Joe Thloloe, reportedly said he thought it was unlikely that the ANC’s proposed MAT would materialise as it would be subjected to a Constitutional Court battle, but that the parliamentary inquiry would continue because the ANC has to be seen carrying out its resolutions.

However, it is much more than just the proposed MAT that is at stake this time round. Judging by the vested interests and strong signs of hidden agendas of both sides to this contest, it seems a major “war of ideas” may well lie ahead.

Marikana and the ghost of 1922

(Published in Mining, official magazine of the Chamber of Mines - September 2012)

By Stef Terblanche

Not since the mineworkers’ strike and rebellion of 1922 has South Africa witnessed the kind of violence, upheaval and turmoil seen at its mines this year, and more particularly on the platinum belt. Between August and September alone these developments already cost the lives of at least 46 people, with around 300 more injured. A large number of people are facing criminal trials, while the army was deployed – as in 1922 - to help police restore peace and order.

Since the beginning of this year production losses in the mining industry due to stoppages and disruptions have run into billions of rands. Thousands of mineworkers’ jobs may also be on the line. The already hard-pressed platinum mining industry has been dealt a further severe blow by the labour unrest that quickly spread to other mines and sectors.

The platinum sector already experienced serious pressures as investors held back because of a saturated global market and the persistent European recession. Now, on top of that, the labour unrest caused investor sentiments to take a further negative dive. At the same time rating agencies also took a dim view of events.

Almost 91 years ago, on 28 December 1921, workers on the Witwatersrand gold mines went on strike after the mining companies tried to lower the wages of their white labour force to compensate for losses suffered due to a falling gold price. In addition, the mining companies tried to do away with much of the colour bar on the mines and replace white workers with lower-paid black labour. To a large extent that and subsequent developments entrenched the colour bar and resultant race-based socio-economic conditions, job reservation, and racially differentiated pay scales in the industry for many decades.

Some argue that despite the mining industry having been transformed significantly since 1994, the lingering side-effects of that discriminatory era in the industry continue to be present to this day and may even have contributed to the underlying causes of the tragic events that unfolded at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in August.

Be that as it may, political activists in 1922 – not unlike some of their latter day counterparts – were quick to exploit the already violent strike and instigated further uprisings, turning it into a rebellion. Prime Minister Jan Smuts brought in the army and even tanks, artillery and bomber planes to crush the rebellion after the mineworkers besieged several suburbs and towns around Johannesburg and turned to violence. Over 200 people died with scores more being injured.

A political backlash followed and Smuts was ousted in the 1924 general election. The new government adopted legislation that would entrench racial discrimination in the industry for many decades and protect the jobs of the white strikers.

Thankfully things did not go quite as far this time round, but the loss of life, the destruction of property, injuries and other losses have been bad enough. This time the strikers and their supporters also carried weapons and turned violent, while they barricaded the streets and entrances to residential settlements in the vicinity of affected mines and fought running battles with police.  The strikes have been illegal across the board, with intimidation and lawlessness being the order of the day.

In late August the strikers and others who had joined them killed 11 people – policemen, security guards, and a National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) shop steward among them. The situation at Marikana became increasingly threatening and out of control, and on August 16 police opened fire on the Lonmin strikers killing 34 of them. Most of the striking workers belonged to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) which was recruiting members on the mines in competition with the NUM.

President Jacob Zuma announced the establishment of a commission of enquiry to be led by retired Judge Ian Farlam and sent an inter-ministerial committee led by Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane to the scene. According to the justice department the commission will cost taxpayers an estimated R68-million to R74-million.

Commenting on the unfolding events at the time, Chamber of Mines chief executive Bheki Sibiya said “illegal strikes are lawlessness. Mines are not in the business of dealing in lawlessness. The law enforcement authorities should play a greater role to prevent the lawlessness, while it is the government’s responsibility to engage community leaders and bring this lawlessness to an end.”

Since then the government did announce a security crackdown and deployed police in greater numbers with some 1,000 soldiers brought out to support them. Government also engaged with the affected mines, unions and strikers. But the damage had already been done.

Sibiya also said that these developments were distracting the mining industry from its responsibility to run mines efficiently, supply products to the market, make a profit, create and sustain jobs, and carrying out its transformation mandate.

He pointed out that the events at Lonmin’s Marikana mine and those that were taking place at other mines went beyond industrial action. Sibiya said that, for instance, out of the 293 people who were injured during the strike in Marikana, 133 of them were found to be unemployed people who had nothing to do with Lonmim.

In 1922 it was leaders of the Labour and Communist Parties that instigated the strikers to extend their strike and confront the mining companies and government in a rebellion. This time round it was the expelled former ANC Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema and some colleagues who went from mine to mine inciting workers to continue their illegal strikes until their demands were met. Sibiya, like the government and many others, took a dim view of this, labelling Malema “an opportunist” who was exploiting the situation to serve his own personal agenda.

"The industry has to meet the targets of the mining charter in 2014 and it certainly will not help us get there when people behave like Malema," said Sibiya.

The Lonmin workers’ wage increase of between 10% and 22% eventually agreed to was met by conflicting opinions about its implications among various role-players in the industry. While business and government welcomed the settlement – as it put an end to the unrest at Lonmin’s Marikana mine – the ANC, Cosatu and others warned against its consequences.

NUM president Senzeni Zokwana cautioned that the Marikana deal will put the future of formal negotiation structures under "threat" in that workers may believe they can achieve similar results outside these structures, or that workers at other mines may also demand similar settlements. Among others, leaders like Zokwana, Cosatu general secretary Zwelizima Vavi and ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe shared this concern.

Indeed, the ink on the Lonmin deal had hardly dried when unprotected strikes spread to other mines with workers demanding similar increases. But companies like Gold Fields, whose workers were striking at its KDC west operations, near Carletonville, said they would and could not negotiate individually because gold mining companies, unlike platinum mines, negotiate in a collective bargaining forum. Furthermore, the gold mining sector is midway through a two-year wage agreement.

Following the recent events, it seems the platinum mining industry may now also seek to secure a collective bargaining arrangement for the future.

The causes and consequences of the Marikana strike are many and complicated and it is best left to the Farlam commission to determine these. Already many possible causes and consequences have been raised with different parties holding contradictory views on claims around, for instance, the living conditions of workers, the level of remuneration received by workers, and more.

However, one possible contributing factor may have been the current labour legislation. In the wake of the Marikana tragedy, labour relations experts and non-Cosatu union officials were calling for a review of labour laws to prevent the uneven competition among unions that they believe may have contributed to the Marikana tragedy.

Legislation currently favours recognition of majority unions, leaving little legal space in which minority unions can operate. This may have been a consequence of Cosatu’s demand of “one industry, one union” at the time the legislation was being drafted. As a result, current labour legislation holds that a union with membership of 50% plus one in a specific workforce category can insist that employers negotiate with it exclusively.

That has suppressed free competition and has made it very difficult for employers to create structures in which they can negotiate with minority unions. Cosatu, however, is known to be opposed to any review of labour legislation. Following the recent events, President Jacob Zuma also poured cold water on opposition demands for such a review.

Marikana could not have happened at a worse time. Negative market conditions, low platinum prices, weakened demand, and global economic developments were already putting pressures on production and profits. In 2008 the price of platinum – historically more volatile than that of gold – fell from U$2,252 to U$774/oz., shedding almost two-thirds of its value. In February this year the platinum price was at a high of U$1,729/oz before plunging to a low of U$1,384 in June. By August platinum was trading at around U$1,390.

In its interim results report released in June, the world’s biggest platinum producer, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), stated: “Global demand for platinum during the first half of 2012 was marginally weaker than expected as firmer jewellery demand, stimulated by current depressed price levels, was unable to offset weak auto catalyst and investment demand. Industrial demand for platinum remained flat as expected”.

The low global demand for platinum and the very limited alternative markets resulted in mines looking at cost-cutting initiatives and down-scaling operations. Naturally they would resist sudden demands for hefty pay increases outside of pay agreements already officially in place and accompanied by illegal wildcat strikes. Another possible consequence of the labour unrest is that many jobs could be lost. According to National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary Frans Baleni as many as 10,000 jobs could be on the line.

But even despite all these developments, the Chamber of Mines cautioned about making a conclusion that the industry as a whole is in crisis. "We have to understand the causes of the industrial action that is taking place," spokesman Vusi Mabena said. “Strikes are not taking place across the sector, but are restricted to platinum and possibly to gold. It is a serious generalisation to say that the entire industry is in crisis.”

"At the time when the strikes started, the platinum industry was already going through difficult times," he said. “Then the demand for increases of wages to R12,500 came on top of that.”

Finally, Shanduka chairperson Cyril Ramaphosa, who sits on the board of Lonmin, believes something good may yet come out of the Marikana tragedy. The industry, says Ramaphosa, was poised for a “step-change” that will bring significant improvement, he said.

There is hope that the ghost of 1922, and now that of 2012, will be laid to rest.

Timeline of key developments before and after Marikana

·         1999:  Joseph Mathunjwa, a NUM leader at BHP Billiton’s Douglas Colliery, forced out of the union then led by Gwede Mantashe who is now ANC secretary-general. He launches AMCU and starts recruiting coal and platinum miners in competition with NUM.

·         2006: Archie Palane, NUM’s deputy secretary-general, popular on the platinum mines, is prevented from succeeding Mantashe as secretary-general apparently for political reasons. After he exits workers on platinum mines feel abandoned by NUM.

·         2006 – 2012: AMCU makes serious inroads into NUM membership but struggles for recognition and participation in formal bargaining structures under existing labour legislation.

·         Thursday 20 January, 2012: Start of wildcat strike over pay and conditions at Impala Platinum (Implats), Rustenburg. Three workers die in clashes between AMCU strikers and NUM non-strikers and over 17,000 workers are fired.

·         Monday 5 March: Implats strike ends and most workers are re-hired.

·         April: Implats implements 8-10% pay increase as part of settlement with workers.

·         Friday 10 August: AMCU workers launch wildcat strike at Lonmin, Marikana demanding pay hike.

·         Sunday 12 August: NUM and AMCU workers clash over wildcat strike – tensions rise.

·         Tuesday 14 August: Police gather at Lonmin, Marikana after striking AMCU workers and supporters kill 10 people including 2 policemen.

·         Thursday 16 August: 34 workers die, 78 are injured and 270 arrested when police open fire on Lonmin strikers, many of them heavily armed.

·         Friday 17 August: Meeting between Chamber of Mines and AMCU scheduled a week earlier postponed due to previous day’s events.

·         Saturday 18 August: Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu convenes urgent meeting of mining industry stakeholders to address investor concerns following Lonmin unrest. Expelled ANC youth leader Julius Malema urges other mineworkers to join in the campaign waged by Lonmin workers.

·         Tuesday 21 August:  Malema accompanies striking miners to lay murder charges against police involved in shooting dead the 34 miners.

·         Wednesday 22 August: Unrest spreads to other mines.

·         Wednesday 22 August: President Jacob Zuma visits Marikana and scene of the shootings and meets with strikers.

·         Thursday 23 August: National day of mourning declared. Malema calls for a "mining revolution" in South Africa. President Zuma appoints judicial commission of inquiry into Marikana tragedy.

·         Thursday 23 August: Chamber of Mines holds first meeting with AMCU.

·         Monday 3 September: Four miners injured in strike violence at Modder East goldmine. Authorities release the first batch of the 270 Marikana miners.

·         Wednesday 5 September: Trade union Solidarity lays incitement charge against Julius Malema. Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane and NUM strongly condemn Malema’s provocative statements and populist rhetoric.

·         Friday 7 September: Floyd Shivambu, suspended ANC Youth League spokesperson and now campaign leader for the Friends of the Youth League, tells Mail & Guardian campaign to destabilise mines and national mass action to bring mining industry to a halt will be intensified.

·         Monday 10 September:  Some 15,000 workers down tools at a Gold Fields mine.

·         Tuesday 11 September: Body of man hacked to death found at Marikana bringing death toll to 45. Around 3% of Lonmin’s 28,000 Marikana workers report for duty.

·         Tuesday 11 September: Julius Malema addresses 15,000 striking workers at Gold Fields’ Kloof and Driefontein Complex (KDC) near Carletonville, telling them there must be a national strike at all the mines until NUM leadership steps down and pay is increased to R12, 500. Chamber of Mines and NUM dismiss Malema and his calls.

·         Wednesday 12 September: Anglo American Platinum halts operations at 5 mines in Rustenburg area over safety concerns after some workers strike, intimidating non-strikers.

·         Thursday 13 September: Calls by labour experts, non-Cosatu unions, political parties, mining companies and others that labour laws be reviewed to allow smaller unions to participate in wage negotiations and avoid conflict like that at Lonmin.

·         Friday 14 September: Labour unrest at Aquarius Platinum in Kroondal near Rustenburg. The mine halts operations. Ferrochrome producer Xstrata evacuates all staff at its Kroondal chrome mine due to increased protests. Government announces a security clampdown.

·         Saturday 15 September: Police and soldiers move into Marikana. Several are injured in clashes, including many women.

·         Monday 17 September: Police arrest 42 people for embarking on an illegal strike at Royal Bafokeng Platinum. Aquarius Platinum resumes operations. President Jacob Zuma tells Cosatu’s national congress that work stoppages on platinum, gold and coal mines have caused a loss of production to the tune of R4.62-billion in the last nine months, while the state had lost a further R3.1-billion.

·         Tuesday 18 September: Workers and management at Marikana agree to wage increases ranging between 10% and 22% and an end to the strike. Anglo American Platinum reopens five mines closed the previous week over unrest.

·         Wednesday 19 September: Police fired rubber bullets at a crowd near an Anglo American Platinum mine in Rustenburg. Workers insist their strike continues but the company says it is over.

·         Thursday 20 September: Striking Lonmin workers start returning to work as a result of the wage agreement agreed to. Cosatu and others warn the agreement could destabilise formal bargaining structures and systems and workers will demand the same at other mines. NUM says up to 10,000 jobs could be lost as mining companies say some shafts have become unprofitable due to recent events. Labour unrest spreads to AngloGold Ashanti.

·         Friday 21 September: NUM meets with Chamber of Mines to discuss wages of mine workers nationally.