Proving themselves at every turn: the women at Koffiefontein

A visit to Petra Diamonds’ Koffiefontein mine deviates from the norm in one significant way. Instead of being escorted around the mine’s surface and underground operations by men whose years in mining correspond to the layers of dust on their boots, two women in their early twenties, Maria Visagie, a qualified miner, and Marian Davis, a surveyor, serve as guides.

Entirely at home in what for decades has been a male-dominated sector, the women at Koffiefontein exude passion and ambition for their career paths. Having found that hard work, reliability and commitment ensure the respect of their male counterparts and seniors, these women are determined to claim for themselves a place in the mining world: “You want to prove a point,” says Maria, “that women can do it, and can do it well.”

Maria envisions a long-term future in mining; her goal is to study environmental management and to work with the underground ventilation systems, believing a clean and healthy working environment to be a productive one. Janine Nieuwenhuizen, a plant attendant whose production controller training will be complete at the end of 2011, has taken part in the mine’s Leadership Development Programme and envisions women in senior mining positions in the near future.

Though no incidences of discrimination against women have taken place during the working life of those interviewed, the systems that are in place to deal with such eventualities are well known and the women would feel comfortable, even obliged, in the interests of their female co-workers, to report them. “I think it’s your responsibility to address something like that, especially as a woman,” says Marian, who is known affectionately around the mine as ‘Davis’, a recall to her now-retired father who spent many years at Koffiefontein mine.

Every day presents a new challenge, a new lesson, a new experience, the women agree. “It’s an ongoing learning process,” adds Marian, another participant in the Leadership Development Programme, “and an exciting career.” Forging their own paths, these women prove, time and again, that mining is as much a woman’s world as a man’s.

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