South Africa Inc should be doing much more to incentivise the recovery of precious metals from tailings dams for sound societal and environmental reasons that could free Johannesburg of its artificial ‘Berlin Wall’-type political legacy barriers that tilt commute times unfairly and block new-era residential development, DRDGold CEO Niël Pretorius said on Tuesday. DRDGold, which recovers gold from tailings dams and mine dumps, presented an awesome set of cash-gushing and dividend-yielding financial results for the 12 months to June 30, a period that yielded R240-million for the government in the form of taxes and 5 424 kg of gold at a time when the gold price is soaring beyond the R1-million/kg mark.
