Fears mount of Aurora-style strip at Blyvoor

LONI PRINSLOO and JANA MARAIS

HUNDREDS of destitute mineworkers are pinning their job hopes on a shadowy company called Goldrich, which has been given the go-ahead for a R70million deal to buy the struggling Blyvooruitzicht, west of Johannesburg.

However, there is concern about whether Goldrich intends to resuscitate the struggling mine, which went into liquidation last August, or simply strip it and leave the workers high and dry.

The people behind Goldrich include Thulani Ngubane and Fazel Bhana, who face lawsuits running into the hundreds of millions of rands for their roles in Aurora Empowerment Systems, which was awarded the bid for Pamodzi Gold’s East Rand and Orkney mines when Pamodzi went into liquidation in 2009. However, the Aurora bosses stand accused of simply stripping the mines, leaving workers unpaid.

Ferdi Dippenaar, the CEO of Village Main Reef, the last operator of Blyvoor, said he was “surprised to hear that the liquidator would even consider selling the mine and assets to people who have a bad track record in ensuring that affected parties and especially employees get paid”.

However, any repeat of the Aurora debacle could have a devastating effect on the area.

Last week, Business Times visited the quiet streets around the Blyvooruitzicht mine in Carletonville, where a few out-of-work mineworkers sit in front of worse-for-wear rustyroofed houses.

On a dusty street corner, two jobless miners — Motsehi Phokoje and Mphahameng Tatolo — lamented how they had not been paid since August last year when the mine went into liquidation.

The two are among the 1700 mineworkers desperate for the mine to begin operating again, an ironic scene considering that Blyvooruitzicht means “joyful prospects”.

“It is hard for us now that we’re no longer working. It is difficult to buy food for ourselves,” said Phokoje, 42, an underground driver and father of four who has worked for Blyvoor for 18 years.

They hope that the long-struggling mine, where turnaround efforts by DRDGold and Village Main Reef failed over the past few years, will return to production. If this does not happen soon, the two men will have to return to their families in Lesotho emptyhanded. “We’re just staying around waiting for things to be all right,” said Phokoje.

“I am still having that hope that I will get my job back,” said Tatolo, a locomotive driver who has worked at the mine for nearly a decade.

Like other Blyvoor workers Tatolo, who supports his parents, wife and two children, is owed money by Blyvoor.

Questions over Goldrich’s motives remain, given the links to Aurora and the fact that the new company has only paid R4.8-million of the R70-million to the liquidators so far — after the deadline was extended in December.

When questioned about this, Ngubane insisted that the company had enough funding from a “private family trust in Holland to get one shaft operational, focus on surface operations such as reworking tailings dams and dumps, and reinstate 400 workers.

Despite Ngubane and Bhana’s ties with Aurora, Ngubane insists that Blyvoor will not be a repeat of what happened with Pamodzi’s assets.

“We paid our school fees there. What we’ve learnt from our previous experiences — it will never be repeated, I can guarantee you that.”

Although Ngubane declined to say how much capital is available to operate the mine, he said Goldrich would pay a further R6-million to liquidators tomorrow as part of the deal terms. Ngubane said he did not expect the full R70million purchase price to come from the funders in the Netherlands. “What they give us is enough to get on the mine.”

He said the plan was to return the mine to operation and “making money again”, and the cash generated on the gold mine would be used for further payments and to fund operations.

However, the last available financial statements for Blyvoor, when it was operated by Village Main, showed a loss of R88-million for the June 2013 quarter. Village Main lent R189-million to Blyvoor for operating expenses to keep it afloat during the 14 months it was running operations.

Blyvoor liquidator Leigh Roering, from HCRS, did not respond to telephone calls and e-mails over the past 10 days. The liquidators set aside the agreement with Goldrich on January 17, but it was reinstated after Goldrich won an urgent interdict at the South Gauteng High Court on Thursday.

Workers who have stayed at Blyvoor in the hope of getting their jobs back may also soon be homeless. A Rustenburg-based construction company submitted a winning bid for the Blyvoor village, planning to redevelop the properties and sell houses to middle-income families.

The developer had been footing the bill for water and electricity since December, and was charging tenants R3000 a month to recoup costs, said a company director, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The only way Tatolo would be able to stay in Blyvoor if the rent is enforced is if he starts earning again.

“As I’m speaking I don’t have anything. I have nothing. I’m sending nothing home,” he said.

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