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Our course presenters and associates

Professor May Hermanus

May took up an appointment in April 2006 as an Adjunct-Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand where she is the Director of the Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry (CSMI).

She currently serves as Chairperson of the Board of the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR), and as a Director on the Board of the Railway Safety Regulator in the public sector. She is also Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Bokamoso ESOP Trust (which oversees the Employee Share Ownership Plan of AngloGold Ashanti) and a Director of Afripalm Resources.

Her interest in sustainable development stems from her long involvement since 1982 in occupational health and safety. She has worked in the NGO, trade union, private and public sectors in South Africa, and in International Labour Organisation forums. She was formerly the Chief Inspector of Mines in South Africa, and has served as chairperson of the Mine Health and Safety Council, chairperson of Board of the Mining Qualifications Authority, and as a member of various boards and committees including Mintek. Prior to joining the Department of Minerals and Energy, May was the group health and safety manager for Samancor. Her first formal appointment in the field of health and safety was with the National Union of Mineworkers where she co-ordinated the union’s health and safety programme. Her roles and responsibilities have ranged from accounting officer, senior manager, regulator, and facilitator of stakeholder processes, to consultant and policy developer.

May has a BSc (Geology) from the University of Cape Town and an MSc (Engineering – physical metallurgy) from the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a Takemi Fellow 1998/9 of the Harvard School of Public Health, a Fellow of the SAIMM and a member of the Collegium Ramazzini.

Dirk Bakker

Dirk has a mining career spanning some 45 years. He holds an MSc Mining Engineering degree as well as a BA Law degree. After having been a section manager on several gold mines, he joined the Mine Inspectorate, from which he retired in 2000 as the Chief Inspector of Mines. He then joined a major platinum company as the group safety manager. After retiring a second time, he became a consultant and worked in many different countries. He joined Wits University at the beginning of the 2009, as a visiting senior lecturer and project manager with the Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry (CSMI).

Ingrid Watson

Ingrid joined Wits in November 2009 as the Programme Manager for the Biophysical Environment. She has 14 years environmental experience, of which nine have been in the mining industry. Her experience has focussed on environmental management and sustainable development, predominantly in exploration. She holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology and environmental science, an MSc in Environment and Society and an MPhil in Sustainable Development Planning and Management from Stellenbosch University.

Professor Kobus de Jager

Kobus holds a BCom degree from the University of South Africa in 1984 (Unisa) and has obtained various other qualifications through the University of the Witwatersrand: a Graduate Diploma in Mechanical Engineering in 1987, an MSc (Mechanical Engineering) in 1990 and a PhD (Mining Engineering) in 1997. He also completed a Management Development Programme through Unisa in 1989. He has also attended an Advanced Management Programme and a Strategic Leadership Programme at Templeton College in Oxford and completed a Certificate in Management Studies, through the Saïd Business School, also in Oxford. He is also the holder of a Mine Manager Certificate of Competency. He was an examiner for the Advanced Ventilation Certificate and the Mine Manager’s Certificate for a number of years. Kobus has 35 years experience in the mining industry. Twenty nine of these were spent at AngloGold Ashanti, ten years of which were at an executive level, including a period as head of sustainable development for Africa: Underground. Currently, he is the head of the mining and industrial division of GOBA (Pty) Ltd, consulting engineers and project managers and has been an Honorary Adjunct-Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand since 1994.

Dr Daniel Limpitlaw

Daniel is a mining engineer, specialised in the assessment of both direct and indirect impacts of mining on the environment and the surrounding communities. He has experience in geographic information systems and remotely sensed image processing for impact assessment, having presented courses in ventilation/refrigeration engineering and hazard management. He was the project manager for the mining, minerals and sustainable development Southern Africa project and has been involved in several mining-related sustainable development projects. He has experience across the mining lifecycle on projects in several Southern African countries.

He works on projects relating to small scale mining, management of mining impacts, and spatial assessment. Daniel consults extensively in the fields of mine closure, local government and local economic development and impact assessment.

He was previously the director of the Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry at the University of the Witwatersrand and has been the technical services manager for a gold mine in Fiji. He is currently a consultant who specialises in the analysis of, and solutions to problems around sustainability in the mining and minerals sector.

Advocate Gys Rautenbach

Gys has been a member of the Johannesburg Bar since 1986. He has extensive experience in mine health and safety law, and has been involved in many of the inquiries into major mining disasters.

He has recently, together with Phillip Masilo, published a book titled, Commentary on the Mine Health and Safety Act. This book is a timely commentary on the Act which seeks to guide the mining industry on its various aspects that maybe misinterpreted or improperly implemented, providing clarity on how the Act works. The book is prescribed reading for the CSMI’s training course on this Act.

Andre Stockhusen

Andre joined the mining industry in June 1973 where he progressively qualified in mine ventilation, occupational hygiene, mining and general safety risk management practices during a career spanning thirty two years. He has been an independent consultant since January 2005. He creates and delivers training packages for incident investigation and is also practising in mine ventilation, occupational environment control, general safety risk management, emergency preparedness and systems compliance. Andre also carries out audits for underground and opencast mines in metalliferous base metal, asbestos and coal mines, including their associated mineral beneficiation plants.

He has gained experience in project management and maintains a keen interest in accident root cause investigation and the compilation of graphic event reconstruction presentations. He has been training in accident investigation using root cause problem solving techniques for the past six years at various companies. Andre was engaged by the CSMI as a visiting associate and part-time lecturer. He has served in the capacity of project manager for the SHE risk management programme at the CSMI since April 2008.

Dr Annelie Naudé

Annelie is director of G3 Business Solutions Pty (Ltd) and an experienced quantitative and qualitative research specialist in the social sciences. As part of the G3 team she has been involved in a number of stakeholder engagement research and consultation projects in the South African mining industry, including community perception surveys, employee surveys, housing needs assessments, socio-economic baseline studies, and projects that focused on stakeholders, such as government, organised labour, and traditional authorities. Between 2003 and 2005 she was director of the research focus area for sustainable social development at the North-West University’s Potchefstroom Campus. During her academic career she acted as supervisor and promoter to a number of Masters and Doctorate students in communication studies and sociology. She was appointed as external examiner for a number of dissertations and theses in her field of expertise by the University of Pretoria (UP), University of South Africa (UNISA), former Rand Afrikaans University (RAU – now University of Johannesburg), and University of the Free State. She holds a Masters degree in Communication Studies (cum laude) from the former Potchefstroom University (now North-West University) and obtained her PhD in Corporate Communication Management from the same university. She is author and co-author of various research articles in international and South African scholarly journals and has presented research papers at various South African and international conferences.

Ron Cohen

Ron is currently based at the Colorado School of Mines, Division of Environmental Sciences and Engineering in the USA. He holds a BA in Biophysics from Temple University in Philadelphia, and a PhD from the University of Virginia. He is a member of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines and the American Society of Civil Engineers. Ron has authored various publications and refereed journals and symposia volumes.

Markus Reichardt

Markus has 13 years experience between 1990 and 2003 in a variety of operational and corporate environmental, small business development and community engagement positions in the South African-based Anglo American Group, culminating in four years as corporate environmental manager for AngloGold Ltd.

Since January 2003, Markus has been an independent consultant for resources and financial sector clients in Southern Africa, focusing mainly on due diligence, sustainability reporting and mine closure.

From 2003 until June 2005 he was a director of SR & I (Pty) Ltd, the data provider for the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Sustainability Index.

Markus also lectures on sustainability issues at two South African tertiary institutions and is a member of the governing boards of two environmental NGOs. He is pursuing a PhD on the history of rehabilitation and mine closure techniques in the South African mining industry. He also writes on sustainability issues for the Chamber of Mines of South Africa and the Ethical Corporation Magazine in London.

Julie Stacey

After graduating with a postgraduate degree in earth and life sciences, Julie worked in an applied research environment focusing on the use of GIS in geological and environmental projects. She has worked as the environmental officer and ecologist for an open pit diamond mine, participated in the development of the South African Bureau of Standards Environmental Unit, and spent some time consulting on environmental management systems implementation and auditing, EIA’s, and development projects. With the Chamber of Mines, she undertook specific policy and technical analyses relevant to the mining industry in the HSE fields, including participating in the revision of national legislation. She has represented the mining industry in a number of policy, liaison and negotiating teams and forums, including national government bodies, the Mining Industry Association of Southern Africa (as part of the SADC structures), the United Nations, and has represented the industry and presented papers at International forums.

Julie was the global safety, health and environment (SHE) manager and the sustainable development operations manager at Anglo American plc.

She is now an independent consultant in the field of sustainable development, and is chairman of the sustainability portfolio committee of the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa, with whom she is also a council member.

Dr John Robert Johnston

John holds a BSc (Honours) from the London University and is a trained physicist by profession (1969) while working at the Institute of Occupational Medicine and Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, Scotland. He started his professional career at the National Coal Board in the UK and has subsequently spent over 30 years in South Africa in a variety of senior management roles (chemical, mining and general industry) in which safety, occupational hygiene and environment feature prominently. He has published widely in scientific literature and was co-editor of the SIMRAC Handbook of Occupational Health Practice in the South African Mining Industry and the MHSC Handbook on Mine Occupational Hygiene Measurements.

Professor Mary Hazel Ross

Mary is currently in independent consulting practice with a contract appointment as medical consultant to De Beers. She is also an honorary professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand. Mary is a specialist in public health medicine as well as in occupational medicine with extensive experience in both occupational and public health at operational, academic and research levels, particularly in the mining and health service sectors.

Vijay Nundlall

Vijay has 26 years collective experience in the mining industry and holds the following qualifications: certificates in blasting, mine environmental control and the one for radiation protection officers; a Masters degree in Public Health (Wits) with specialisation in Occupational Hygiene as well as a Graduate Diploma in Mining Engineering (Wits).

Vijay joined Goldfields South Africa as a learner official in mining in 1985, rising through the ranks to section ventilation officer and later to senior ventilation officer. In 1998 Vijay left Goldfields and joined the Department of Minerals and Energy as an inspector of mines: occupational hygiene.

Idris Ally

Idris has a BSc Chemical Engineering degree and has qualified with over 90% from the Gold Fields Mining School of Excellence. He has worked in the Chamber of Mines for the last ten years, first as a technical assistant and then a senior policy analyst in the safety and sustainable development department. He was seconded to the mines in 2008/2009 to obtain operational experience as well as to identify the barriers to implementation of research and best practices.

Nancy Coulson

Nancy has a BSc (Honours) as well as a MEd and works as a capacity development, training, education and communication specialist in a number of public health and environmental areas. Her particular interests are environmental health, occupational health and safety, HIV/AIDS and health promotion. She works collaboratively with the CSMI including work in the areas of leadership for health and safety and the development of innovative facilitated processes to support a transformation of the approach to safety performance. She is also the programme leader for a capacity development programme for the South African Mine Health and Safety Inspectorate that includes the development of training modules for inspectors, and communication products to reinforce best practice and capacity development work within the policy unit.

Nancy has extensive experience in capacity development. In 2002/3 she led the capacity development programme of the award winning Gauteng Sustainable Health Care Waste Management Project and in 2006/7 was the director of the capacity development programme for the UNAIDS funded Technical Support Facility Southern Africa. She co-authored a book commissioned by Heinemann titled Developing Capacity for Health: A Practical Approach.

Dr Nellie Mutemeri

Nellie consults on mining projects in Africa, with a particular focus on artisanal and small-scale mining. She is also an associate of the Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry (CSMI), University of the Witwatersrand. She has a PhD in Geology. Her experience includes supporting SMMEs in the mining industry (i.e. artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM)), geology, applied mineralogy and development studies (including gender). Her past work in South Africa and the African continent has included initiating and supporting sustainable livelihood interventions for communities impacted by mining. She has advised some African mining ministries on appropriate ASM policy and legislative frameworks as well grassroots interventions supporting the ASM sector, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Southern Sudan and Zimbabwe. She set up the Mintek Artisanal and Small Scale Mining School and was the facilitator of the Technical Reference Group (Small-scale mining) of the South African Mining Qualifications Authority. She was previously a director on the boards of SAWIMIH (South African Women in Mining Investment Holdings) and the Zenzele Technology Demonstration Centre. She is a member of the advisory committee of the World Bank’s Communities and Small-scale Mining (CASM) initiative and also runs the Secretariat of CASM-Africa.

© 2009 CSMI

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