Thesis (MTech. degree in Architecture: Professional)--Tshwane University of Technology, 2012. / The aim of this thesis is to design a Disaster Prevention Centre for the platinum mining sector which will save lives and aid in the South African Department of Mineral and Resources' campaign towards "zero fatalities" within the mining industry. The facility is intended to be a prototype for the preventative training of platinum miners around the world by examining past, present and predicted future mining incidents and using this information to create a safe simulated learning environment or mock-up scenario of possible mining hazards.

Ph.D. / Mining operations significantly influence the environment due to direct and indirect discharges of waste products into the aquatic systems. The primary aim of this study was to assess the current situation in the platinum mining area and develop a management plan to ensure that existing and potential environmental impacts caused by platinum mining and processing are mitigated. To do this, an assessment was carried out to investigate changes in critical aquatic invertebrate and fish community distributions and assess how they relate to measured environmental factors. Five sites were selected, one reference site which is upstream of heavy mining activities and four sites within heavy mining and processing activities. Standard techniques for water, sediment, invertebrate and fish sampling were used. Macro-invertebrates sampled were identified to family level whereas fish were identified to species level. Multivariate analysis used was cluster analysis by non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) for both macro-invertebrates and fish. Three methods of ordination were used to analyze the biotic and abiotic data namely N-MDS, Correspondence Analysis (CA) and Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA). Cluster analysis of macro-invertebrates data revealed three major groups based on sampling period (low flow or high flow) and the last cluster according to the locality. Multidimensional scaling ordination of high and low flow for macro-invertebrate communities confirmed the groupings detected by cluster analysis. Cluster analysis for fish communities revealed two groups at 50% similarity; the first group is the combination of reference and exposure sites for both high and low flow sampling regimes. No fish were sampled at site 4 during both low and high flow regimes. Multidimensional scaling ordination of high and low flow fish communities confirmed the groupings detected by cluster analysis. Analysis using a similarity profile (SIMPROF) test indicated that fish communities are statistically (p=5%) the same. It was found that macro-invertebrates and fish respond differently to environmental variables.

The hydrometallurgical refining of platinum group metals results in large volumes of liquid waste that requires suitable treatment before any disposal can be contemplated. The wastewater streams are characterized by extremes of pH, high inorganic ion content (such as chloride), significant residual metal loads and small amounts of entrained organic compounds. Historically these effluents were housed in evaporation reservoirs, however lack of space and growing water demands have led Anglo Platinum to consider treatment of these effluents. The aim of this study was to investigate whether biological wastewater treatment could produce water suitable for onsite reuse. Bench-scale activated sludge and anaerobic digestion for co-treatment of an acidic refinery waste stream with domestic wastewater were used to give preliminary data. Activated sludge showed better water treatment at lab scale in terms of removal efficiencies of ammonia (approximately 25%, cf. 20% in anaerobic digestion) and COD (70% cf. 43% in digestion) and greater robustness when biomass health was compared. Activated sludge was consequently selected for a pilot plant trial. The pilot plant was operated on-site and performed comparably with the bench-scale system, however challenges in the clarifier design led to losses of biomass and poor effluent quality (suspended solids washout). The pilot plant was unable to alter the pH of the feed, but a two week maturation period resulted in the pH increasing from 5.3 to 7.0. Tests on algal treatment as an alternative or follow-on unit operation to activated sludge showed it not to be a viable process. The activated sludge effluent was assessed for onsite reuse in flotation and it was found that there was no significant difference between its flotation performance and that of the process water currently used, indicating the effluent generated by the biological treatment system can be used successfully for flotation. Flotation is the method whereby minerals refining operations recover minerals of interest from ore through the addition of chemicals and aeration of the ore slurry. Target minerals adhere to the bubbles and can be removed from the process.

Ph.D. (Geology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The UG3 at Modikwa Platinum Mine occurs as a platiniferous, planar chromitite seam. It is stratigraphically located in the Upper Critical Zone of the Eastern Bushveld Complex. Field work study comprise of underground mapping, sampling, surface mapping, borehole core logging, microprobing and microscopic investigations carried out at the Rhodes University. The UG3 at the Modikwa Platinum Mine is about 22cm thick chromitite seam underlain by a white fine grained anorthosite and overlain by a brown medium grained feldspathic pyroxenite. It is an incomplete cyclic unit consisting of chromite and feldspathic pyroxenite. The UG3 reef at the Modikwa Platinum Mine lease area represents a Platinum Group Metal resource of 300 million tons of ore at an in situ grade of 2.5g/t. Under the current market conditions the UG3 reef remains unprofitable to mine in an underground operation due to the operational cost involved. However, it has been illustrated that the UG3 chromitite seam can increase profit margins in an open pit operation provided it is mined together with the economic UG2 chromitite seam. The extraction of the UG3 as ore in the four Modikwa UG2 open pits would result in a combined operating cash profit of R330 million. The UG3 chromitite seam is platiniferous. The platinum-group minerals (PGM) range in size from less than 10μm to about 70μm. The PGMs are associated with sulphides and are both located in the interstitial silicates and are concentrated in the chromitite seam. The PGMs show a strong preference to contact boundaries of the silicate grains, the chromite grains and the sulphide phases. In some instances, they are enclosed within the chromite grains in association with sulphides. The general sulphide assemblage comprises pentlandite and chalcopyrite whereas, the PGMs assemblage comprises cooperite, ferroplatinum, laurite, FeRhS and PtRhS.

Resource control as a form of community participation in the mineral economy has gained much recognition. One prevailing argument is that direct control of natural resources by local communities is an important precondition for equitable utilisation of the natural resource wealth, peaceful co-existence between mining corporations and indigenous communities, and congenial relations between local communities and the state. Studies have also shown that the absence of direct community control of mineral wealth remains a major factor in the communal resistance and socio-political conflict witnessed in the natural resource-endowed regions of countries such as Nigeria, Ecuador, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, little is known about mineral resource control at the community level. Does community control necessarily translate to equity? How does local involvement in the mobilisation of mining royalties benefit different segments of the community? Indeed, how do different segments of the community “control” the wealth? What is the specific model adopted to engender broad-based community participation in the utilisation of mineral wealth – and does it matter? These theoretical and practical questions were the impetus for undertaking this study in the Royal Bafokeng and Bakgatla Ba Kgafela – two platinum-rich ‘traditional’ communities in South Africa’s North West Province that have significant control over platinum resources in their territories. Utilising ethnographic data collected in the two study communities in 2008 and 2009, the thesis examines the character of community participation in platinum wealth utilisation; specifically, the conditions under which community participation promotes or hinders sustainable community development. The analysis uses a “three-dimensional participation ladder” conceptual scheme, based in part on Sherry Arnstein’s (1969) “ladder of citizen participation” and subsequent typologies of participation. Among the key findings of the thesis are that despite observed benefits, the interface of resource wealth and community development is fraught with tokenistic participation, elite-targeted grassroots anger, and local tensions – all linked to the contradictory nature of participation. The thesis further reveals that in some instances the challenge of platinum wealth-engendered community development tends to undermine existing customary and democratic spaces for participation, and that this is exacerbated by community-level issues such as poverty and inequality. The findings of the study compel a shift of analytical focus from conflict as an epiphenomenon of collective community exclusion and deprivation (as in the case of many natural-rich countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere), to conflict as also resulting from collective community inclusion (in natural resource utilisation). At the policy level, the study generates insights that will, hopefully, assist mineral resource-endowed countries, such as South Africa, in dealing with the challenge of developing appropriate policy frameworks for regulating business and social partnerships between local communities and mining corporations, and within resource-rich communities themselves.

Thesis (M.Sc. (Geology)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / The Two Rivers Platinum Mine (TRP) located in the Eastern Bushveld Igneous Complex is currently exploiting platinum-group elements (PGE) in the Upper Group 2 chromitite (UG2) Reef at the Dwarsrivier Farm. TRP has acquired a new prospect (at the Buffelshoek Farm) and is currently planning to mine the UG2 Reef and potentially also the Merensky Reef (MR). Three drill-cores which intersected the UG2 Reef and MR at the Buffelshoek Farm made available by TRP were sampled for mineralogical studies using complementary techniques including reflected light microscopy, mineral liberation analyser and electron microprobe. The platinum group minerals (PGM) which host the PGE exhibit variability in their flotation rates and consequently variable PGE recoveries that is mostly attributed to the not so well understood PGM distributions and characteristics. The purpose of the study was to investigate the PGE process mineralogical characteristics such as the PGM phases, their modal abundances and mineral associations, as well as the grain size distributions within the UG2 Reef and MR at the Buffelshoek Farm. The observed PGM phases are broadly grouped into PGE sulphides, PGE arsenides, PGE bismuth-tellurides, PGE antimonides and PGE alloys. The PGM phases are largely dominated by PGE-sulphides (average of 80%) in the UG2 Reef and PGE-arsenides (average of 39%) in the MR. Although the UG2 Reef and MR are mineralogically different, the PGM observed are similar in composition, but vary in their proportions. The PGM are mostly associated with base metal sulphides typically, pentlandite in the UG2 Reef and silicates, which are dominated by amphiboles in the MR. The PGM grain sizes generally range between 2 and 22 microns in the UG2 Reef and range between 2 and 32 microns in the MR. The concentrations of platinum are the highest in both the UG2 Reef and MR, and with the platinum largely deported in PGE-sulphides (about 69 - 84.9%) in the UG2 Reef and PGE-arsenides in the MR. Palladium is mostly deported in the PGE sulphides (about 52.3 - 69.2%) in the UG2 Reef and mostly deported in PGE antimonides (about 43%) and PGE bismuth-tellurides (about 37%) in the MR. Rhodium (Rh) is entirely deported in the PGE sulphides in the UG2 Reef and deported in PGE sulphides (about 86.5%) and PGE bismuth-tellurides (about 13.5%) in the MR. Expected recoveries of PGM ranges from 76 to 89% for PGE sulphides and arsenides in the UG2 Reef and 61.3% in the MR, which is considered good. PGE bismuth-tellurides, PGE antimonides and PGE alloys are expected to be variably to poorly recovered, requiring suitable reagents to be well recovered both in the UG2 Reef and MR. / Faculty of Science and Agriculture Research Division Geological Society of South Africa North West University's School of Geo- and Spatial Science

This study sought to determine the impact of a training and development (T&D) programme on the perceived performance of human resource assistants at a platinum mine in South Africa according to the following four performance dimensions: (i) personal (ii) customer; (iii) internal business; and (iv) learning and growth. A non-experimental design was used for this study, which was predominately quantitative in nature. Data was collected using a structured, self-administered questionnaire, which consisted of closed-ended questions. Based on the results obtained in this study, it was apparent that the T&D programme contributed significantly to an increase in the performance of employees. However, there are certain areas that can be improved in order to maximise and optimise the learning of employees. Recommendations were made regarding areas for improvement and possible future research. / Human Resource Management / M. Tech. (Human Resources Development)

This study sought to determine the impact of a training and development (T&D) programme on the perceived performance of human resource assistants at a platinum mine in South Africa according to the following four performance dimensions: (i) personal (ii) customer; (iii) internal business; and (iv) learning and growth. A non-experimental design was used for this study, which was predominately quantitative in nature. Data was collected using a structured, self-administered questionnaire, which consisted of closed-ended questions. Based on the results obtained in this study, it was apparent that the T&D programme contributed significantly to an increase in the performance of employees. However, there are certain areas that can be improved in order to maximise and optimise the learning of employees. Recommendations were made regarding areas for improvement and possible future research. / Human Resource Management / M. Tech. (Human Resources Development)

This study investigates the role that African traditional beliefs and practices play in defining psychological problems, determines how these beliefs and practices manifest in a counselling relationship and explores how Western based forms of counselling manage these manifestations in counselling. This investigation is in the context of the on-going debate on the relevance of Western Psychological counselling in South Africa and the rest of Africa, including my experience during my internship to register as a Counsellor. It explores the impact of conducting counselling with clients whose worldviews are different from those of the counsellor and focuses on the impact of the client’s worldviews on psychological well-being, psychological ill health and the resolution of psychological problems. Psychological well-being, ill health and counselling were discussed from a Western perspective. The study found that the client participants defined their psychological problems in terms of their African traditional beliefs and practices. They communicated their presenting psychological problems in ways that created possibility of miscommunication between themselves and their counsellors, for example by using figurative language. There was also a clear distinction between how psychological problems are managed from an African traditional perspective (ritualistic) and a Western perspective (talking therapy). The study recommended the creation of specific departments in Universities to embark on research aimed at establishing foundational structures on which to build an African Indigenous Psychology as an alternative to Western Psychology. More comprehensive research on African people’s attitudes is, suggested, on what traditional Africans think of psychological counselling. Another recommendation accruing from the limitation on sampling in this study is that future studies should be conducted with larger and more diverse samples; moreover, data should be gathered on a wider variety of demographics and cultural belief systems and practices. To counter prejudice and ignorance, the counsellor ‘to be’ should study African culture and customs during their BA Honours studies. On-going training and workshops on cross-cultural issues from various cultures should be part of the counselling profession. More emphasis should be placed on prevention and therefore more mental health clinics in the rural areas need to be opened and general education on psychological issues and cultural integration be initiated. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)