15 June 2012
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community spending, where the major employment opportunities would be created. The mine plans to supply iron concentrate to the South African steel industry as well as to international steel smelters in China and India. Limenite concentrate, an iron titanium oxide used mainlyfor the production of rutile, a pigment base, and for the production of titanium metal,will be supplied to smelters in KwaZulu-Natal. The project will consist of three open pits of up to 150 meter deep, a concentrator plant, stockpile area, engineering and support infrastructure, roads and rail link and water management facilities. Exploration for the mine, which will be situated on some 3 500 hectares at Mohlaba’s Location, 20 kilometer from Tzaneen, started in 1991 in five phases up until 2008, covering all aspects of mapping, geophysical survey,drilling and the evaluation of potential ore, metallurgical
testing, the compilation of a technical feasibility study and the undertaking of an environmental impact assessment and management programme, the social and labour plan, the integrated water use licence, and various other required applications and reports. A well-known Tzaneen resident, Mr Tony Long, initiated the exploration and he still plays a key role in the planning of the new mine. The spokesman said that the mine will comply with all legal requirements of the Mineral and Petroleum Resource Development Act, the National Environmental Management Act and the National Water Act. “Our concentrator water requirements will be some two-million cu/m per annum, which will be accessed from an 80 kilometer pipeline to be installed from the Olifants River. However, the mine itself will provide an increasing percentage of this water as the open pits increase in depth,” he said.
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Fear lessl y the tr uth
Major boost for jobs Over 2 500 jobs are estimated to be created during the start-up phase of the Tivani open pit mining project for the production of titanium and iron ore near Tzaneen. Although only 240 workers will be employed by Tivani Mine itself in the initial phase, the headcount will increase progressively as the project moves through the beneficiation processes to the full smelting facility, which will have a significant additional head count. According to a mine spokesman, there would be a considerable additional benefit of support services and local LONG
Protesters block the road between Giyani and Tzaneen
“A rail spur will connect with the existing railway line between Letsitele and Hoedspruit and a section of the line will be upgraded to handle our export requirements via either Richards Bay or Maputo.” A tailings dam would be established nearby, as well as a discard dump.
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Erratum: In last week’s exclusive more detailed report about the mine, we referred to the mine’s iron ore concentrator with a capacity to process 11 metric tonnes of run-of-mine ore annually, producing 2,5 metric tonnes of concentrate… It should have read million tonnes. We also reported that the potential smelting facility is projected to produce 1,5 metric tonnes… which in fact is 1,5 million tonnes. We gladly publish the correct figures.
www.bulletin.us.com Exclusive footage
Strikes in action
The community of Ndhambi and Mageva villages near Giyani barricaded the R529 with burning tyres, rocks and other objects in response to the Greater Giyani Municipality’s failure to respond to their demands to attend to the safety of the road. They staged a march to the local police recently, to air their griev-
ances regarding the R529, which is alleged to have claimed the lives of forty people in three years and caused injury to many others. The people demanded speed humps to be built. The flow of traffic between Giyani and Tzaneen was halted for about an hour, until the police arrived and dispersed the crowd
(mostly scholars who had slipped away from school). Municipal workers arrived and started a process for the humps on the road, by marking where it should be built. This calmed the crowd and traffic could flow again. Here members of the SAPS are clearing the road. — Photo & caption: Orlando Chauke
Striking municipal workers in Tzaneen went on the rampage on Wednesday and again yesterday. The Bulletin filmed the disgusting behaviour of workers when they stormed into the GTM’s offices and caused damage to property. See it, exclusively, on our website at www.bulletin.us.com
Watch out for our Schools Bulletin next week.