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February 2016
MODERN MINING
31
EVENTS
a shadow over the Mining Indaba
The scene in the exhibition
area. There were roughly
230 exhibitors at this year’s
event.
as uncertain as ever,” he said, adding that he
believed the South African mining industry
was in the middle of an existential crisis and
faced “a potent cocktail of ever increasing costs
and declining revenues.”
As is the case every year, many of the indus-
try’s heavyweights presented at the Indaba or
participated in the many panel discussions that
were held. They included Anglo American’s
Mark Cutifani, AngloGold Ashanti’s
Srinivasan
Venkatakrishnan
(universally known as Venkat),
Ivanhoe’s Robert Friedland, Rio Tinto’s Alan
Davies, South32’s Graham Kerr, Lonmin’s Ben
Magara, Vedanta’s Tom Albanese and Randgold
Resources’ Mark Bristow.
Many executives of junior and mid-tier min-
ers also addressed delegates, among them Clive
Johnson of B2Gold (which has developed the
Otjikjoto gold mine in Namibia and is build-
ing the Fekola mine in Mali), Dr John Clarke of
Banro, which has two gold mines in the DRC,
R Michael Jones of Platinum Group Metals
(which has just produced the first concentrate
at its new Maseve platinum mine) and Brad
Gordon of Acacia Mining, the biggest player in
Tanzania’s gold mining sector.
Space does not allow an exhaustive dis-
cussion of these presentations but a common
uncertainty and the MPRDA Amendment Bill.
“Unfortunately, the Minister provided very lit-
tle detail as to how he was going to give effect
to any of these undertakings, leaving investors