South Africa’s gold production and reserves

The recent underground mass death of more than 80 ‘illegal miners’ or zama-zamas (chance-takers) highlights the parlous state of South Africa’s gold-mining industry. Also attracting notice and comment recently is the official acknowledgement 1 that South Africa (S.A.) has fallen into second place after China in the world ranking of gold production. At the same time, S.A. continues to claim a first-place country ranking in the world list of gold ‘reserves’, with a (suspiciously round and, since 2001, unchanging) quantity of 36 000 tonnes (or about 40% of the global total) still in the ground. 1 How credible is this latter claim? A critical examination of the full history of gold production from the Witwatersrand, based on figures from the Chamber of Mines of South Africa, 2