South Africa heard a lot about dreaming during the State of the Nation Address (SoNA), when President Cyril Ramaphosa referred to dreams towards the end of his far-reaching address.

Mining Weekly believes there is merit in creating space for South Africans to dream more, but like TE Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, we are keen on those constructive day dreams.

All people dream, but not necessarily equally, wrote Lawrence. Open-eye daydreamers often come up with things that only dreaming can realise.

Take Silicon Valley, in the US. That was someone’s dream and it took solid-state development sky high. Now, in South Africa, we have ‘Platinum Valley’, a Silicon Valley replication, which is now being pushed through belatedly but determinedly by new Trade and Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel.

The important aspect of Patel’s participation in the SoNA debate was that he time-framed his every utterance. What he promised was for ‘Platinum Valley’, which has had a long gestation period, to be legislatively up and running in the next three months.

When it came to his metals fabrication support programme for new plant and equipment, he promised to meet investors and stakeholders around foundries, steel mini-mills and the local beneficiation of scrap metal in the next 100 days.

Good news from the private sector this week was manifold. It involved taking a promising North West platinum mine out of mothballs, bringing a rich gold resource back to life in the same province and reviving a copper and zinc asset in the Northern Cape.

Platinum group metals (PGM) mining and marketing company Northam Platinum will be spending a self-funded R2.2-billion on the Kukama shaft project, at the Eland mine complex, in Brits, the privately owned Blyvoor Gold will be producing again at the old Blyvooruitzicht mine, near Carletonville, before year-end, and Orion Minerals received the thumbs up to bring back the dormant Prieska copper and zinc mine.

Patel’s announcement followed Ramaphosa’s seven-word SoNA commitment to “explore the potential of the hydrogen economy”, Northam CE Paul Dunne estimates steady-state production of 150 000 oz/y, at unit costs in the lower half of the industry cost curve from Eland, and Orion CEO Errol Smart expressed delight at the Prieska bankable feasibility study paving the way for payback in 2.9 years from the start of underground production.

It is fitting that platinum-catalysed hydrogen fuel cell development is listed as the main focus of the Platinum Valley Special Economic Zone, which has also been earmarked for platinum recycling and additional autocatalyst manufacture.

Fuel cells are the answer to a world desperate for vehicles that do not pollute the earth and power stations that are environmental paragons of virtue, and platinum is in need of the next growth phase that fuel cells offer.

By entering the field, South Africa is helping to bring about what the rest of the world is striving to get and offering the help of what is a national patrimony that needs greater demand stimulation.