February 2014
MODERN MINING
27
COMPANIES
restarted in 2009, with Mwana Africa embark-
ing on a two-phase programme to return the
mine to a sustainable state. The first phase of
the programme included the re-capitalisation of
the mining fleet and refurbishment of one of the
two mills while the second phase (completed
Opposite page:
The processing plant at Freda Rebecca. The mills have been refurbished and
the leach circuit expanded.
Above:
Loading underground at the Freda Rebecca gold mine.
BNC’s Trojan nickel mine
was brought out of a
four-year long care and
maintenance programme in
September 2012.
The main activity currently at Klipspringer is
a programme to retreat the Marsfontein slimes
dam. This is a JV with Greenhurst Mining &
Exploration. The operation started in October
2013 and by 20 January this year had produced
just over 6 000 carats at an average price of
US$22,75 per carat. Steady-state production
of 22 560 tons per month is planned from this
month (February) onwards.
Mpinga is a citizen of the DRC (his father was
the country’s prime minister in the late 1970s)
but has been based in South Africa for a number
of years. Although mining is now his passion,
he has a BSc in Agricultural Economics from
McGill University, Canada, and an MSc in
International Agricultural Development from
the University of California at Davis. Early in
his career he worked for Bechtel Corporation
in San Francisco but in the early 1990s joined
Anglo American where he was later respon-
sible for the exploration and acquisition of
resources in Africa. In 1997 he was appointed
to the Anglo board. He left the group in 2001
and in 2003 founded Mwana Africa Holdings,
which led to the formation of Mwana Africa as
an AIM-listed entity in 2005.
Mpinga’s vision is to create a true multi-
commodity, multi-country African resource
group. To achieve this goal, the Zimbabwean
assets are crucial. While many observers regard
the Zimbabwean mining environment as being
highly dysfunctional, Mpinga disagrees. Indeed
he is highly bullish on the country’s prospects,
saying “he couldn’t dream of a better place to
be running a mining operation” and arguing
that it has gone from being one of the most over-
regulated mining jurisdictions in Africa to one
of the most liberal.
He also points to other positives including
good infrastructure, an “educated, modern and
committed labour force”, foreign exchange lib-
eralisation, an established and efficient banking
system and (after the ravages of hyper inflation,
which peaked in 2008) single-digit inflation.
Freda Rebecca, which is Zimbabwe’s cur-
rent flagship gold operation and which Mpinga
describes as an “underground quarry”, is obvi-
ously key to Mwana’s plans. Developed by
Cluff Resources in the 1980s, the mine poured
its first gold in 1988 and by the late 1990s (by
which time it was in the Ashanti Goldfields
fold) had evolved from an open-pit operation
into an underground mine. It was bought by
Mwana in 2005 from AngloGold Ashanti (the
successor to Ashanti Goldfields).
Adverse economic conditions in Zimbabwe
led to Freda Rebecca being put on care and
maintenance in 2007. Operations were then
