Is SA's gold mining industry turning into Zimbabwe-Lite?

By Tim Cohen: Here’s an interesting factoid: despite having about half the world’s known gold reserves, South Africa will produce less gold this year than it did in 1906, when horses were the predominant form of public transport. But amazingly, the extraordinary decline of South Africa’s gold mining industry is not the subject of public outcries, parliamentary enquiries or even particularly of public comment.

Yet every year, less and less gold gets produced by an industry ravaged by increasing costs, lower ore grades, a hostile mining ministry whose priority is overwhelmingly focused on transformation rather than production and a largely disinterested public....read on