The gold did not run out — the owners did: Duarte da Silva's devastating case against SA's mining abandonment

The gold did not run out — the owners did: Duarte da Silva's devastating case against SA's mining abandonment

South African gold output has fallen by roughly nine-tenths from its peak while the dollar price has multiplied more than twenty-fold — from a 1999 low near $255 to a January-2026 record above $5,500, before easing back toward $4,000 by mid-year. The decline of the deep mines was real and, on its own terms, correctly forecast. But the figure that wrote off the resource — a reserve calculated when gold traded near nine hundred dollars — was an ec…