Open Writing

I remember one Friday evening we were bored so I came up with the idea to phone the process plant and tell them to do an emergency shutdown as there was a problem with the Main Control Centre (MCC). I would do this by pretending to be Essie E_, the foremen on duty, as I could do a fair imitation of his voice, which would sound OK over the phone.

The guy working in the secondary crusher section was Hennie H_ who refused to stay at Affenrucken with us and stayed in town. He drove out with the foreman each day and was a bit of an arsehole. So around 9 pm I phoned the guy.

It went something like this:

“Hennie.”

“Ya.”

“Dis Essie hier” (“It’s Essie here”).

“Ya meneer” (“Yes sir”).

“Luister, ons het ’n problem in die MCC and moet die hele plant dadelik stop.” (“Listen, we have a problem in the MCC and have to stop the plant immediately.”)

“Dadelik?” (“Immediately?”)

“Ya dadelik.” (“Yes, right now”).

“Ok.”

“Dankie Hennie.” (“Thanks Hennie”).

By then I could barely contain myself and only just managed to put down the phone before bursting into laughter along with everyone else.

I found out the next day that Hennie H_ had just started shutting down the crushing plant when Essie noticed that the conveyor feeding the ore to the crusher had stopped, so he phoned Hennie and asked him what the hell was going on and why wasn’t there any ore being fed to the crushers? The amount of tonnage put through the plant on each shift was important as there were targets that had to be met and any stoppages or breakdown impacted on throughput.

Hennie had to do some fast explaining about the phone call.

I’m pretty sure that Hennie suspected us, but had no proof. I told Essie about the incident many years later after I’d left the mine and returned on one of my visits. He laughed and figured it was one of us at Affenrucken that had pulled the stunt.

Extra Tonnage

As mentioned before, the secondary crushing section had to meet certain tonnage targets. This was about 3500 tonnes for a ten hour shift or 350 tonnes per hour. This naturally depended on the type of ore being fed to the plant. Some ore was soft, some hard, some had a lot of sand and so on.

Sometimes we could feed 500 tonnes per hour, other times only 200 tonnes per hour. So it was a constant balancing act to get the correct mix of ore to the plant so that we could have a good tonnage for a shift. There was a device called a weightometer which was just a weight meter that was under the conveyor to measure and record the weight of the ore as it passed over it.

Now one operator was always getting good tonnage on his shift and we could never figure out why, even when we knew that the ore was hard as steel and that the tonnage rate had to slow. He was boasting to everyone what a good operator he was and what dimwits we were not being able to operate the plant properly. So one night shift one of the operators (Sakkie) stayed behind for an hour to find out what the operator was doing to get such good tonnage.

Well Sakkie watched our intrepid operator and saw him saunter to the weightometer under the conveyor and fiddle around for a few seconds and then walk happily away.

After he had disappeared, Sakkie went and checked the weightometer and what do you know. Out operator had stuck a screwdriver under the weightometer thus increasing the apparent load passing over it on the conveyor belt. This in effect increased the tonnage recorded by about 10 to 20%. The bastard was cheating. Sakkie wondered what he should do.

Taking out the screwdriver would only decrease the tonnage by 500 to 800 tonnes. This was not an issue. So Sakkie decided to get nasty. He increased the pressure of the screwdriver on the weightometer and this in effect almost doubled the tonnage.

He then left and came back to the single quarters at Affenrucken. Our cheating operator didn’t have a clue until the end of shift when he discovered that according to the reading he had put through 8000 tonnes in 10 hours – virtually impossible.

There must be something wrong with the weightometer the foreman said, so they had the weightometer recalibrated that morning during the shutdown. That night Sakkie did the same thing to the weightometer and that night the same thing happened – nearly 9000 tonnes was put through in the shift.

They checked and calibrated the weightometer again. The next night Sakkie had a quiet word with the foreman who checked the weightometer and found the screwdriver. He and the plant superintendent were pissed off to say the least. The operator was moved from the section and given all the shit work for the next three months to teach him a lesson and we were all happy again.

Tripping the Substation

Sometimes the guys didn’t want to work on Sunday nightshift, especially if it was a long weekend and they had been down to Cape Town and driven back that same day. So being tired and needing sleep, what they would do is trip the substation in the plant. Due to the high power drain when starting up the process plant, the operators had to start the machinery slowly so as not to kill the whole power system. The A3 milling section at No 1 plant had six huge ball mills that took an enormous amount of power and each mill had to be started a few minutes after each other to enable the power system to stabilise and adjust to the load.

So what the operator would do is start all the mills at the same time which would trip the main switch in the substation and bang, all the power would go out. The electrician would then have to be woken up, drive all the way from town and reset the main switch. This could take anything up to two hours, more if there was fog. In the meantime everything was in darkness so all that one could do was sleep…

The same mill operator pulled this trick three or four times before the foreman got wise and threatened to cut his balls off if he did it again. It was a good scam while it lasted.