THE GOLDEN SEMICIRCLE 545
Orange
Free State possibilities on the other, that the actual course of events
in the Orange Free State during the war years must be recorded. Even
during the war itself, however, a government committee, under the
distinguished chairmanship of Sir Robert Kotze, had examined a range of
problems, technical and financial, having a considerable bearing upon
the future of the nascent Free State field. The Committee on Deep Level
Mining,60 which reported in the early part of 1945, was
concerned, in the first instance, with the possibility of extracting,
from the mines of the Central Witwatersrand areas, the estimated
resources of gold lying at depths below 8,500 feet. These were
considerable:
On the assumptions, however, that only one-third of the area contains payable reef, that the dip is 300,
that there is only one payable reef, and that the average width is 4
feet, there emerges a figure of 35,000,000 tons for every 1,000 feet of
vertical depth. If the average grade were 325. per ton, which is the
average of the mines now working in this area, the gold yield would be
-£56,000,000 for every 1,000 feet of depth, or, in round figures, £200,000,000 to a depth of 12,000 feet.
The
report was much concerned with the so-called 'geothermic gradient',
i.e. the relations between temperature and depth: the rise of
temperature per 1,000 feet was 5 degrees F. on the Central Rand, but
was much steeper in the Orange Free State. The technical problems were
the possibilities of improved ventilating methods, the substitution of
'dry-mining' for 'wet-mining' on the Rand, the costs incurred and the
incidence of taxation in meeting these costs. Paragraph 60 of the
report recommended that 'adequate encouragement would be given if it
were provided that all capital outlay, required for extending the
operations of any mining company below the limit to which in the
opinion of the Government Mining Engineer wet mining can be carried on,
be treated as working costs'. This recommendation was also to be
applied (with some others) to the Free State, for 'in the Orange Free
State it appears that the geothermic gradient is steep and that deep
level temperatures will be met with much earlier than on the
Witwatersrand'.
This report, and the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Gold Mining Taxation,61
were to have considerable influence on legislation relating to the
taxation of mines. As the annual report of the Chamber of Mines for
1947 pointed out:
60 Published as U.G. 18/45.
61 Published as U.G. 16/46.
