Gold (28 page)

Like other epidemics, gold fever sweeps the world with unequal effect. At Kibali, we drove one day through Durba town in a cavalcade of white SUVs, rolling clouds of thick red dust onto the people by the road. Our windows were rolled up tight against the heat and dust. From our air-conditioned spacecraft, we looked out at the alien
souls. Many wore rags. Ninety percent of the children had malaria. Some villagers would escape this in a miraculous transformation, moving into the houses that Randgold was building and that we were on our way to see. There were ocher bungalows with glass windows and doors that locked, and water and electricity, laid out in a new town in a palm grove by the sparkling river. The position of a fence decided who would live there. The fence enclosed the gold mine property. Land that Randgold wanted to dig up was inside the fence. If your house was inside too, you moved to paradise.

Outside the town I saw a woman standing in a field, leaning on a rake. She wore a green turban and a dirty green dress, and from her face, every shred of hope had been extinguished. She turned her back as we went by.

S
PECIAL THANKS TO
B
ARRY
E
ICHENGREEN
for reading the manuscript and making valuable observations. Thanks also to Michael Woodford of Columbia University for explaining the mechanism of the gold standard, and for reading parts of my account. Neither of these scholars is responsible for any blunders I may have made.

I owe a large debt to Kathy Sipos at Teranga Gold for arranging my trip across Senegal, and to Martin Pawlitschek for his time and patience. At the Teranga exploration camp I was lucky to be shown around by Donald Walker, Djibril Sow, and Thierno Mamadou Mouctar. Thanks to Mark English for a great visit to the Sabodala mine. I would be lower than a churl if I failed to thank Awa Ba for giving me a lift out of the pit in her 100-ton ore truck. Of course I owe most for the Senegal visit to Alan Hill, Teranga's chief executive, not only for the visit, but also for his generosity in reading parts of the manuscript and correcting technical mistakes; for sharing with me his lively recollections of some of the most exciting passages in
modern gold mining; and for giving me lobster for breakfast on a terrace overlooking Table Bay in Cape Town, allowing me a glimpse of what life is like for those who run gold mines.

Warm thanks to Kathy du Plessis at Randgold Resources for finding me room on a small and crowded plane, and to Rod Quick and Paul Harbridge for taking pains to explain the complexities of the ore body at Kibali.

Greg Hall opened many doors for me in China. His affection for the country, and for the distinguished gold people who are his friends, helped me understand their remarkable feat. Special thanks to Professor Zhu, to Feng Tao, and most of all to X. D. Jiang, that indefatigable practitioner, who wrung a profitable modern gold mine out of the most unpromising material.

Hayden Atkins at Macquarie Bank in London and James Steel at HSBC in New York helped me understand the bullion analyst's perspective, and I often talked to Sterling Smith of Country Hedging. I am very grateful to my cousin, the investment banker Mark Cullen, for finding someone to verify the mechanics of how a hedge fund might manipulate the gold price, and for his generosity in introducing me to market insiders whose identity I have agreed to protect.

My introduction to Bad Brad Wood came from Sally Evans, a star reporter for the M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism in Johannesburg. Stefaans Brümmer, a veteran reporter and a managing partner of the Centre, put me in touch with Sally. The Centre is funded by, among others, the Open Society Foundation and the
Mail & Guardian
newspaper, which carries the Centre's reports.

Alan Fine arranged my visit to Mponeng, for which many thanks, with special gratitude to Clive van der Westhuizen, the mine's engineering manager, for diligently answering my innumerable follow-up questions.

I owe much to Dean Heitt at Newmont for showing me around the original mines of the Carlin Trend, and for reading my chapter on the discovery of invisible gold and offering suggestions. Anything amiss in the account is my fault entirely.

I thank Andy Lloyd for setting up my first interview with Peter Munk and arranging the visit to Goldstrike.

Thanks to my dear friend Alex Beam and to my old comrade-in-arms, Ian McLeod—thanks for the push.

Most important, for withstanding a withering fusillade of drafts, and for keeping up a steady, level-headed, and unnervingly accurate return fire, my deepest thanks are to my wife, Heather Abbott.

A
LSO BY
M
ATTHEW
H
ART

N
ONFICTION

Diamond: The History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair

The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art

Golden Giant: Hemlo and the Rush for Canada's Gold

A Viewer's Guide to Halley's Comet

F
ICTION

Into the Purple Duchy

The Male of the Species

Death Train

C
HAPTER
1: T
HE
U
NDERGROUND
M
ETROPOLIS

Picture Manhattan Island
:
Google Maps gives distance from 59th Street to 110th Street as 2.7 miles. AngloGold Ashanti's reserves profile (“Ore and Reserves,” pdf at
http://www.anglogold.com
) for 2011, p. 35, confirms mining to 126 level (12,600 feet = 2.38 miles). Exploration drilling extends lower. In 2013 they are drilling from 126 level to hit the deeper Carbon Leader Reef at 4,200 meters (2.6 miles). The headframe completes vertical silhouette of mine to ±2.7 miles. All other physical mine data from reporting.

Their target was a thirty-inch-wide strip
:
See
http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/mponeng
: average channel width 78cm, or 30.7 inches. For gold prices see
http://www.kitco.com/gold.londonfix.html
. For value of deposit: annual production of 600,000 ounces reported at
http://www.infomine.com/minesite/minesite.asp?site=mponeng
, multiplied by that day's London morning fix of $1,581.

The world is awash
:
2011 survey of bullion market: Jack Farchy, “Sizing Up the Gold Market,”
Financial Times
, September 9, 2011,
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/eb342ad4-daba-11e0-a58b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2QoQC31wu
.

As the gold price soared
:
“Soros Doubles Down on Gold,”
New York Times
, February 2, 2010,
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/soros-doubles-down-on-gold/
; Azam Ahmed and Julie Creswell, “Bet on Gold Nets Paulson $5 Billion,”
New York Times
, January 29, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/business/29paulson.html
.

Fear drove the price
:
Allan H. Meltzer, “Gold Fever Is a Symptom,”
New York Times
, August 2, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/02/should-central-banks-buy-gold/gold-fever-is-a-symptom-of-inflation-fears
.

Sometimes the quakes
:
See for example Dennis Ndaba, “Can South Africa Stop the Mine Fatalities?”
Mining Weekly
, February 1, 2008,
http://www.miningweekly.com/article/can-south-africa-stop-the-mine-fatalities-2008-02-01
.

Some of the rockbursts had been so powerful
:
John Oxley,
Down Where No Lion Walked
(Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1989), 159.

Sometimes it winds men to their death
:
Robert Block, “Locomotive Crushes 105 Gold Miners,”
Independent
, May 12, 1995,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/locomotive-crushes-105-gold-miners-1619145.html
. Liezl Hill, “Nine Killed in Accident at Gold Fields' South Deep mine,”
Mining Weekly
, May 1, 2008,
http://www.miningweekly.com/article/nine-killed-in-accident-at-gold-fields039-south-deep-mine-2008-05-01
.

Once our cage was full
:
All data on winders from Clive van der Westhuizen, engineering manager, Mponeng mine.

Swarming the gold mines
:
My account of ghost miners is based on interviews with police and mine officials, and on-site visits, but see also “100s of Miners Could Be Buried,” News24, June 4, 2009,
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/100s-of-miners-could-be-buried-20090604
; Monako Dibetle, “Dying for Gold,”
Mail & Guardian
, June 15, 2009,
http://mg.co.za/article/2009-06-15-dying-for-gold
; “Mystery of Aurora Corpses,”
Mail & Guardian
, August 13, 2010,
http://mg.co.za/article/2010-08-13-mystery-of-aurora-corpses
.

Gold once had a sacred aura
:
For Charlemagne's reliquary, see
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/germany/aachen-cathedral
. For St. Edward's Crown, see
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/31700/st-edwards-crown
. For the Seville altarpiece, see Francisco Gil Delgado,
Sevilla Cathedral
(Barcelona: Editorial Escudo de Oro, 2003), 28–33.

In August 2011 the “BlackBerry riots”
:
“The BlackBerry riots,”
Economist
, August 13, 2011,
http://www.economist.com/node/21525976
; Josh Halliday, “London Riots: How BlackBerry Messenger Has Been Used to Plan Two Nights of Looting,”
Guardian
, August 8, 2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/08/london-riots-facebook-twitter-blackberry
; Richard Partington and Jennifer Bollen, “Square Mile on Alert over London Riots,”
Financial News
, August 9, 2011,
http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2011-08-09/bank-branches-left-closed-damaged-by-london-riots
.

His first client
: For Mandla Gcaba as taxi owner and nephew of Jacob Zuma, see Agiza Hlongwane, “Zuma's Nephew in R300m Tender Dispute,” IOL News, December 9, 2012,
http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal/zuma-s-nephew-in-r300m-tender-dispute-1.1437844#.UXA21b_Xf0A
.

Brad's new employers
:
South African Press Association, “Aurora to Pay R10m—Court,”
Mining Weekly
, January 12, 2012,
http://www.miningweekly.com/article/aurora-to-pay-r10m-court-2012-01-12
;
Sarah Britten, “Khulubuse Zuma's Lifestyle Thrust into Auction,”
Mail & Guardian
, April 24, 2012,
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2012-04-24-khulubuse-zumas-lifestyle-thrust-into-auction
; “Zondwa Mandela Faces Charges over Aurora,”
Mail & Guardian
, December 11, 2011,
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2011-12-11-zondwa-mandela-faces-charges-over-aurora
; Martin Plaut, “Mandela and Zuma Goldmine ‘Exploiting workers,' ” BBC News, May 5, 2011,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13275704
.