Sweat yields precious metal The lower depths, $2OO an oz. CARLETONVILLE, South Africa (AP) While telephones jingle in t London, Zurich and Chicago and speculators push gold to record prices, black miners crawl through waist-high tunnels to wrench the metal from the world's deepest mine. Their sweat soaked bodies give some hint of why the metal is so precious. P The miners' day begins in a steel cage hurtling downward at nearly 40 mph past layers of time imbedded in rock. It is almost an hour of stop-and-go before they reach the bottom, where they crawl through a maze of tunnels little more than a yard high to take their 1, turns with jackhammers against the solid rock. The temperature of the rock is 135 degrees. The dust-filled air , is refrigerated to a relatively cool 90 degrees, with humidity 95 percent. The mine, called Western Deep Levels, is the world's deepest at 13,000 feet-- almost 10 World Trade Center buildings on end. An army of 12,351 blacks and 978 whites daily risk their 'iv i es to scratch an ounce of gold from every, two tons of rock. Western Deep Levels, 43 miles west of Jdhannesburg, harvests about 263 pounds a day. It and the other 34 major goldmines in South Africa produce about 700 metric tons of gold a year. south Africa has 70 percent of the free world's gold and in the year ending June 30 earned $3.7 billion from gold sales. Uranium, once a worthless by-product of •goldmining, earned the country $1.3 billion. • Mosutt Moatsdugha, a 35-year-old black miner from neighboring Bot siiana, is one of 378,000 black and 38,000 white miners who descend into the CINEMEREOTHEATRES Wed. 2:45.5,7:15.9:30 Today NATIoNAL 7:15, LAMPOOM 9:30 AminhiAL "SGT. PEPPER'S Today LONELY HEARTS 7:30 ***************% 31 F - ALL * n , if— if- FROSH STUDENT- it- ATHLETES 4 C' "X• come to I ORIEN TATION VdMonday 9 / 1 1/78 *-, 8:00 PM *,Carpenter Auditorium N4c***************: bowels of the earth every day in South Africa to drill and blast specks of gold to fill the country's coffers. Moatsdugha says he likes it here "because of the money." As a team leader, or "boss-boy," he supervises a dozen drillers and "cheezers" men who place explosives into drilled holes. _Moatsdugha earns $ll.OB per eight-hour shift and works 11 shifts in 14 days. He clambers through the jagged tunnels to make sure the drillers keep ham Mering. In near-total darkness, pierced only by miners' lamps, the sweat-soaked men half sit and half recline on a bed of crushed rock and drill with bone-jarring noise into the wall containing the unseen gold in a band an inch to a foot wide. Shirtless miners bathed in the spray of water-cooled jackhammers lean into drills. Their helmets scrape the chiseled roof pressing down at about 14,000 pounds per square inch. In addition to their salaries, all miners, black and white, receive a monthly production bonus based on how many yards of rock they drill and blast. Moatsdugha, a stocky, full-faced man, has worked the mines for 19 years. He says he averages about $250 a month while a driller may earn $l3O. That is a long way from the white miner, or "stoper" who supervises several black teams run by men like Moatsdugha. Johan Fouche, 31, a white "stoper," says he earns $BOO to $l,OOO a month. Taking a mid-morning tea break, Fouche fished a cigarette from his dripping wet clothes and said, "I used to work on the railroad but I left for a career in the mines. The money is better." He said the mining was dangerous and THE SANCTUARY CLUB & DISCOTHEQUE 319 East Calder Way Presents Under 21 Disco Dancing Every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday From 8-11 p.m. $2 Cover Largest Dance Floor And Light Show in the Area, and all the latest disco hits. 234-3012 (No membership required) 111 SEI Fro about every 100 days there's a rockburst in one of his shafts, average for the mine. In matter-of-fact tones, the miner said, "I had a rockburst three or four months ago. One kaffir (black) was killed. It's an act of God. There's no warning." In South Africa's gold mines, the average fatality rate is 1.4 deaths per 1,000 miners, or 582 men killed a year. At Western Deep Levels, rockbursts kill'3o men a year. Along with the miners, plumbers, electricians, welders, riggers, mechanics and engineers work on the hundreds of miles of spaghettied waterpipes, ventilation ducts, electric lines, and compressed air hoses that snake from scores of whirring, hissing machines. Each day at 5 p.m., the end of the day shift, a stacatto series of explosions from thousands of pounds of explosives in hundreds of drilled holes rattle the mine. The blacks are migrants. They generally leave at the end of their six month contracts and go to their native towns and villages. They return to the mine when they need money. There is almost a 100 percent turnover in the mine every year. Critics of the migrant labor system say it serves business by keeping wages low. But mining officials point out that until a few years ago, gold was officially pegged at $35 an ounce and goldmining was not particularly profitable. To keep costs down blacks are paid low wages, but their salaries have risen 300 percent in four years. It's been 10 years since the price of gold was freed from $35 an ounce, and it is now selling for about $2lO an ounce. UNIVERSITY CALENDAR SPECIAL EVENTS • Monday, September 11 • Intramural sports: men's bowling, entry open. Entry close, noon, Thursday, Sept. 14, IM Office. HUB Craft Center course registration, noon-5 p.m., 7-10 p.m., Room 312 HUB. Sign-up for car pools, through Sept. 15, Energy Extension Office, Room S-121 Henderson. Telephone: 863-0749. OTlS'meeting, 6:30 p.m., Room 307 HUB. • Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, 7 p.m., Eisenhower Chapel Main Lounge. Colloquy Lecture. George Plimpton on "An Amateur Among the Pros," 8 p.m., Eisenhower Auditorium. Free U course initiator's workshop, 8 p.m., HUB Reading Room. TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE PLAYHOUSE BOX OFFICE BEGINING SEPTEMBER 11. STUDENTS $1.50 ADULTS $2.50. TELEPHONE RESERVATIONS CALL '865.1884 PRISINTIDINCONJUNCTION WITH THI INSTITUT! !OR ARTS AND HUMANISTIC STUDIES AND CAMP DAVID, Md. (UPI) If Press Secretary Jody Powell and his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts have their way, the big leaders at the Middle East summit will be seen doing nothing but smiling. Powell •and the other two summit press officers have reserved the right to photographs that will be released from the three-way talks. So far, there hasn't been a frown. All pictures have shown Carter positively beaming. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, often with their arms around each other, play Alphonse and Gaston as they go into the rustic lodges. Each leader has his personal photographer with him, to record these historic moments for his per sonal memoirs, no doubt, and for their national archives. Therefore a photographer just happened to be around when Sadat and Begin ran into each other by chance on their morning strolls. Israeli television got first crack at the distribution, causing Powell's plans to control all the releases and photos out of the summit to go awry. Powell does not appear too com fortable in the role of chief spokesman. He has to wear a suit and tie even a vest something he rarely does at White House briefings. IMF COLIIOI OF ARTS AND ARCHITICTURF 19711 Nothing but smiles from summit talks Analysis He also has to coordinate what he says with three delegations, and that's not easy, especially when they are bound and determined to say almost nothing. He could have more TV exposure than all three summit leaders put together if he chose. He is the only official coming and going from Camp David during the talks. But he does not want to hog the show. When he was televised at the start of a news briefing, he complained to the TV bureau chiefs. Members of the official delegations have been spending their spare moments playing tennis, hiking on the Camp David woodland trails and riding bicycles. The skeet range was closed for the duration of the summit. Powell told reporters one of the principals suggested that they all leave their wrist watches behind when they held meetings. A reporter asked if the watches have calendars. Carter has Richard Nixon to thank for sprucing up Camp David, redecorating several cottages and building others. He also installed sophisticated communications equipment. Gerald Ford was not fond of Camp David, preferring to spend Sunday afternoons in Washington, playing golf with old friends. Lyndon B. Johnson entertained at the retreat but quickly became bored with it. He much preferred to go home to Texas for a long weekend, back to his roots. The Daily Collegian Monday, Sept. 11, 1978-
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