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Attached is the text of the speech which Minister Pik Botha intends to deliver to the Association of Mine Managers of South Africa's Thinksafe Seminar on the Human Factor In Safety.

The speech covers the following ground:

a proposal to establish a Small Miners Bureau to assist small miners;
a brief review of some aspects of the Leon Commission Report
some comments on the effect of the Vaal Reefs disaster of 10 May 1995
how labour and management both need to avoid certain dangers and increase co-operation
the need for Black Economic Empowerment in the mining industry
progress towards a national minerals and mining policy.

After the tragic events at Vaal Reefs on 10 May 1995, the theme for this Seminar, The Human Factor in Safety, could not have been more relevant. I hope your discussion will make a material contribution to safety on our mines. If during your proceedings, an idea or proposals has been launched which comes to be applied and saves even one human life, your Conference would have been more than worthwhile.

Mining is one of the world's oldest callings. The first recorded existence of a mine is said to be a clay and hydrated ferric oxide ochre site excavated in Belgium. Carbon dating indicates that it was started in about 41 250 BC, which puts it as far back as the middle Palaeolithic age. The ochre would have been used as a pigment by the dominant hominid of that time, Neanderthal man.

The Association of Mine Managers of South Africa also goes back quite a bit - to 1892, I am told. That is almost as long as modern South Africa mining itself. It is intriguing to speculate on what the founding fathers of your organisation would think, had they been able to attend this Seminar. Certainly your organisation will have seen a great deal of human life's triumphs and tragedies over its lifetime.

Mining activities in South Africa date back a long time. Iron was mined in the Soutpansberg during the Iron Age, as was copper during the 8th century of Phalaborwa. In the eastern Transvaal, the indigenous inhabitants mined and traded for centuries in the gold they found there.

In 1867 the Jocbs children, Erasmus and Louisa, discovered a gleaming piece of stone near Hopetown which ironically took months to be identified as a diamond and years to spark off a diamond rush. Gold was re-discovered in sporadic finds in the eastern Transvaal in the 1870s. In 1886 the luckless George Harrison found the first traces of the rich Witwatersrand gold seam and sold his discoverer's claim for 10 pound sterling, before moving on to Barberton. Ever since, South African mining has been in the forefront of man's explorations under the earth.

The most important of these explorations has been to find gold, that almost mystic substance the Incas of Peru called the sweat of the sun. They had an equally enchanting name for silver which they described as the tears of the moon.

Look at any catalogue of the deepest and the largest mines in the world and you will see South African mines featuring prominently, often at the top of the list. You are amongst those who have made this kind of achievement possible.

You are of course not alone in this achievement. Managers alone cannot dig deep mines, remove ore, lay cocopan tracks, load and unload equipment and carry out all the other myriad tasks which mining involves. Without mineworkers we will have no mines. Today in mines across our country 600 000 miners go about their risky duties with courage in the face of significant dangers.

They have the same feelings as other human beings, the same hopes and fears, with mothers and fathers, wives and children - those who weep in loneliness when their men do not come home.

In the history of South African mining, there have been many who have wept in this way. There has been a great cost in human life and injury. And at this present gathering you have commendably been busy concentrating on how to reduce that cost.

There is at present a more intense spotlight on safety in South African mines than there has ever been. This is mainly due to two factors: the first is the recent publication of the Leon Commission on Safety and Health in Mines; the second is the particularly poignant and tragic character of the Vaal Reefs disaster.

I know you are familiar with the Leon Commission Report, but it can be useful to take a quick overview of some of the most important ground it covers.

The Leon Commission observes that 69 000 miners were killed from the turn of the century to 1993 - and average of 742 miners per year. Over a million were seriously injured, equal to an average of almost 11 000 annually. Despite all that has been done in the realm of safety, the annual death rate has only dropped to 680 per year over the last decade, a reduction of just over 8%. Since we currently produce about 600 tons of gold per year, this means that each ton of gold produced in South Africa costs an average of more or less one human death and 12 seriously injured miners.

This is high by any standards and, internationally, we compare badly. The Government Mining Engineer at the time the Leon Commission was holding its hearings, Mr JB Raath, testified that accident rates in the South African mining industry were "appallingly high".

On page 20 of its Report, the Leon Commission reproduces an International Labour Organisation table summarising the fatal mining accidents per year in 19 countries. Of the countries listed, 13 of the 19 have better safety records than ours. Nations like Australia, Malaysia, Poland, India and Czechoslovakia are confortably ahead. In hard coal mines, the Commission reproduces a table showing countries like the Ukraine, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Poland to have significantly lower fatality rates than South Africa.

The Commission even criticises the way we draw up our statistics, claiming that the presentation of mine safety statistics in South Africa in the last decade has "left much to be desired and hampered comparison with international statistics". It also complains that "the task of the Commission was made more difficult because of the dearth of accurate accident records".

It indicates that "no details are available" on gold mine accidents attributed to the "fall or manual handling of material", "rolling rock" and "slipping and falling". "No one gave evidence directly relating to these accidents," continues the Commission, adding that "it is inexcusable that full details of the accident and disease records of the industry have not been published annually since 1983".

These are serious charges and ones that must be remedied - and at speed. Those who try and justify high accident rates on the basis of our unique geology or the great depths at which we mine, cannot use their arguments to justify inadequate statistics. Surely, if we are to overcome this sad record, the first step is to document it well so that we know what it is we need to overcome. I have instructed my Department to implement those recommendations which we are capable of implementing and not to wait for a Cabinet decision to give us the go-ahead.

Our major problem lies with the "big four" of mining: gold, coal, platinum and diamonds. Of these by far the most effective killer and maimer is gold mining, responsible for 85,6% of all injuries and 72,7% of all fatalities. Coal comes in a far but still significant second.

South African mines are inherently more dangerous than many mines elsewhere, as the Commission points out. We mine at tremendous depths. In the future, our mining depths will become even greater. Eleven mines, which between them produced a third - 213 tons - of our 1993 gold output are operating at depths exceeding 2 100 metres. It takes some imagining to realise that, once one is deeper than 1 750 metres or so, one is below sea level on the Highveld! Some mines approach 4 kilometres, where powerful pressures build up. The direct correlation between depth and rockbursts is dramatically demonstrated when we see that the ultradeep min rockburst fatality rate is 3,5 times greater than the deep mine and a massive 6,5 times greater than a shallow mine.

In addition, the composition of the hard and brittle quartzite in which the gold is to be found is conducive to fractures and sudden collapses. Cramped conditions at the ore face due to the narrowness of the reef exclude some safety measures used successfully in other countries. The rock cannot be worked by machine, but needs explosives to loosen its grip on the precious metal which it guards so fiercely. Because of the low proportion of gold in the ore, a large area must be mined to produce the tonnage of gold required to render the mine viable. This is done by using rudimentary and labour intensive mining methods.

These special conditions are clearly significant considering that almost two thirds of the fatalities in gold mines are due to rock falls or bursts.

The Commission refers to "the tendency of many senior mining officials to attribute South Africa's poor mine safety record to physical and human factors beyond the industry's control". "The recurring management apology", it says, "when paraphrased, claims that the systems in place are fine and the accidents are due to human errors".

This is an accusation which the Commission directs inter alia against yourselves and is therefore one which we should take seriously. It is a given that, as the Commission puts it, "the general level of education is dismayingly low". The question is: what do we do about it? The answer would seem to be to offer stepped-up adult educational courses and training beyond the mere needs of functioning in a mine.

I know that much has already been done in this regard. But I would encourage an expansion of existing training programmes. I am pleased to note that Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) is already in place on many mines and that the Chamber of NUM are working on upgrading these and similar facilities throughout.

Costs are often advanced as a limiting factor. But mining accidents have a cost of their own. Consider the millions which a mine loses every day while a shaft is repaired. And that is only the cost of lost production. In addition there are all the ancillary costs. There is also the cost of human suffering against which financial costs cannot be measured.

A further aspect of educational and upliftment programmes is the effect they have on workers' morale. Mineworkers would have the chance to broaden their horizons, to grow mentally and spiritually. This must have a positive effect on productivity and mine safety.

As if the uncompromising findings and recommendations of the Leon Commission were not enough, the mining world and South Africa as a whole were shattered by the particular circumstances of the devastating events at the Vaal Reefs Mine which led to the death of 104 innocent victims, crushed to death at the bottom of the 2 2000 metre number 2 shaft.

The impulsive human reaction is to feel that any safety regime which could allow such an accident must obviously be inadequate, almost irrespective of what actually happened. That is why there has been such an outcry and why mining and safety in South Africa can never be the same again. It is not enough to feel appalled by it. We will have to take steps to ensure that it does not happen again.

This tragedy fell into the category of what the Commission refers to as "accidents from haulage and transport underground, second only to falls of strata accidents". Notwithstanding the danger of this kind of accident, the Commission "was not provided with detailed evidence as to the location or cause of this large group", presumably because it was not available.

In this area as in others, the Commission has recommended the application of the tripartite principle by accepting the National Union of Mineworkers' proposal to set up an immediate and urgent investigation by the Government Mining Engineer's staff, assisted by one nominee each from labour and management. It is ironic that the investigation will be spurred on by recent developments.

Mr David Smith, your chairman, has told me that workers and unions are increasingly involved as equal partners with management in the search together for improved mine safety. This is the only way forward. Let us together accept joint responsibility for safety with the state fully accepting its responsibility as objective arbiter, and approach which will become increasingly possible with the tripartite principle which the Leon Commission has stressed.

Yet the key to mine safety must surely be to return to what is almost a clich‹ but still a fundamental truth. We need to plug away at creating and developing a culture of safety awareness. Just as we promote safe driving, so we must promote safe mining. Both are hazardous activities. In both, the cause of safety needs to be advanced by constructive conditioning programmes whereby we are guided into automatically performing procedures which promote safety. It must become second nature.

Our country has entered a new era. We must begin to think about its implications.

Mine managers are embroiled in the changes taking place in our country, whether they like it or not. You must be aware of this from your everyday experience. The changes are similar to those which took place in developed countries many decades ago. It is not good enough to read the newspapers, listen to the radio, watch TV or chat politics with friends and then think that all these events will pass one by.

The trade unions may make your life most difficult, but they are indispensable to you in the new dispensation. They will not go away. They are here to stay. You should welcome them. They represented the path to a new kind of work force.

There is nothing new about the road ahead. Although it is new for us, others before us have already passed along it as they moved towards a more mature, a more humane society. We are in a state of flux and both labour and management, not to mention the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs and the state in general, will have to learn new lessons and adapt to new realities.

What are these lessons which we have to learn? If management needs to accept that the unions are here to stay, labour must accept that in the real world, you cannot produce something from nothing. There is a tendency to think that the presence of money for mining is automatic, that there is an endless flow and that the money will continue to come even if production is reduced.

There are two dangers here. One is that management does not take the necessary steps to improve the safety, health and general working and living conditions of their workers either because of lethargy and an outdated mind-set or because of a blind drive to maximise profits. If they do this they will give the thrust for nationalisation added impetus. In the end they might find themsevels without a mine to manage.

The other is that labour drives towards unrealistic wages for its members without improving productivity, that it burdens the mines with increased costs without enabling them to improve output. The result will be that the mines will be weakened in their competitive position vis-Ì-vis other mines in the rest of the world. As a consequence our mines will close and the workers will have no compensation at all.

The same outcome will result if mines are nationalised. The state will not have the free market impulses that, historical experience tells us, inspire human nature to maximise efficiency. As has happened in countries that have tried this route, the mines will round own and instead of providing the state with income, will become a financial burden upon it. Eventually those mines, too, will close and those miners, too, far from enjoying improved compensation, will receive no further remuneration at all.

We must keep in mind that improved technologies have made it easier to discover minerals in other countries of the world.

Another aspect of maintaining our competitiveness as a mining country is to recognise that many of our mines are drawing near to the end of their life cycle. If they are to continue to provide jobs and a livelihood for our people, then they will have to swing over to a continuos production mode. I hope the unions are going to be understanding about this, because in the end it is to the benefit of their members. Introducing continuous production will not mean that individual miners will work any longer than they do now. What it will mean is the new jobs will be created to take up the extra working time of the mine. The cost effectiveness comes from the use of the capital tied up in the assets of the mine that will produce 100% of the time instead of lying idle every time the mine stops production.

The Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs has an active programme to encourage economically viable small mining. The Department's Regional Directorates and Minerals Bureau, together with the Council for Geoscience and Mintek, play a particularly prominent role in this. Discussions have been held with mining houses regarding the creation of opportunities for smaller entrepreneurs using mineral rights currently under the larger companies' control. The Minerals Act is due to be amended to improve opportunities for smaller operators. Legal requirements and procedures for prospecting and mining are being made more user-friendly. Small miners are assisted with their applications, the compilation of environmental management programmes, mine rehabilitation procedures and the use of safe and optional mining techniques. Guidance is given in mineral marketing. This programme has achieved practical results in, for example, Delportshoop, Barbrook, Namaqualand and Gazankulu.

I appeal to mine officials and managers to assist small miners wherever possible. You can do much to share the benefits of your skills and experience with those who are eager to learn from you.

The mining industry should set up a Small Miners Bureau which will actively assist both the aspirant and practising small miner to develop himself. In this way the industry can bring its superior resources, energies and expertise to bear on encouraging small mining.

Wherever their are mineral reserves in the hands of the mining industry which can be developed by small miners, those reserves should wherever possible be made available on terms to be negotiated. The mining industry could provide refining facilities to assist them at market rates. The cause of small miners will be furthered more effectively if the state and the private sector join hands in order to assist them. The Bureau could be a joint public and private sector venture. The Department stands ready to join with the industry in this.

The mining house also need to consider ways to make Black Economic Empowerment a reality in their sphere of operation. Apart from the unique contribution which our new business leaders can bring by being on the inside of the mining houses, they will reassure and encourage those that labour in the earth to feel that mineworkers, too, have a real stake in the industry.

Four weeks ago, on 24 April 1995, I called a meeting of stakeholders involved in the mining industry with a view to reaching agreement on the process to be followed in formulating a new national mining and minerals policy. Present were the unions including the National Union of Mineworkers and the Mine Workers Union; the Chamber of Mines; the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Minerals and Mining; the Mineral and Energy Policy Centre and various employer and employee associations. A sub-committee was appointed to hammer out the process or forum which we need for debate in order to arrive at the new policy. Part and parcel of the new policy will of course be a strengthened set of safety measures.

Although the RSA will remain a major gold producer until well into the next century, output is expected to decline steadily due to falling grades and the great depths of the remaining ore reserves. It is of decisive importance that we in the Government of National Unity and in the trade unions and mine management should reach and display unanimity on minerals and mining policy. We must approach our problems clinically and objectively and find ways to avoid or reduce labour/management disputes, work stoppages, additional holidays, spiralling working costs. We need a tripartite contract. Judging by the spirit of the stakeholders meeting I mentioned earlier, the prospects of establishing a minerals policy acceptable to all look good. I was struck by the sincere willingness on the part of the main stakeholders to place their own particular interests below those of the country as a whole.

Thank you for the opportunity you have given me to speak to you this afternoon. You have a great task to do and great times to do it in. May you go forward and use the new challenges to rise to new heights. I believe that you and the trade unions have the will and the capacity to do that.