The BBC's Rodney Smith, once a gold miner himself, reports. Their names are not widely known outside South African mining circles. But their loss will mean the passing of a significant phase of industrial history. East Rand Proprietary Mines is 108 years old. Mining for gold is hard work, and not very well paid But South Africa's mines have been priced out of the market.
Nothing can make deep-level mining cheap.
Ingenious South African mining engineers have been at the forefront of developing clever advanced mining techniques, some, like chemical leaching in situ, more like oil recovery than ore winning. But all of South Africa's significant gold deposits are very deep underground, miles down, at depths that ordinary human beings find hard to comprehend. The shafts are so deep that the country rock is hot to the touch. The devil's workplace. And like the devil's workplace, working at these depths is very dangerous.