"Egoli" is the Zulu name for Johannesburg. It means "place of gold". For most of the past century, this city has been the epicenter of the world's gold production. South Africa's gold mines which are the deepest in the world are running out of reserves. The costs of extraction, cooling and safety increase with depth making mines here more expensive to explore. Miners in China and Australia operate in much shallower shafts. And they don't have the power problems that dealt the industry here a devastating blow in 2008.
Production in 2008 fell by 14.5 percent which was over double the sort of normal rate that had been falling at. Because the mining companies had to trim back on shafts and things that were outside of this sort of optimal sh
