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A Harmony Gold employee died at the Mponeng mine on the West Rand on Monday, Sept. 14, after a seismic event in an underground working area. It was the eighth on-duty death across the group this year.
Harmony told shareholders on Tuesday that it had suspended work in the affected area while it investigates, and that it had notified the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources. The company said it deeply regrets the loss of life and is supporting the employee's family and colleagues.
Where Patrice Motsepe fits is as a shareholder rather than an owner. African Rainbow Minerals, which he chairs, holds 10.63% of Harmony. The Public Investment Corporation, which manages South African government employees' pensions, holds about 16% and is the larger of the two.
It was the second death at a Harmony mine in September. An employee died at Moab Khotsong near Orkney on Sept. 6 in what the company described as a seismicity-related incident.
The sequence through the year runs like this. An employee died in a locomotive-related incident at Moab Khotsong in January. Another died in March at Target 1 near Welkom in an underground incident involving rock-breaking equipment. Two died in May in a shaft engineering incident at Mponeng. One died at Moab Khotsong on June 19 in a fall of ground caused by seismic activity. Then the two deaths this month.
Five of the eight involve seismic events or ground failure, which is what happens when rock under enormous pressure fractures suddenly at depth.
Mponeng is where that pressure is greatest. It operates more than four kilometres below surface and is the deepest gold mine in the world, and Harmony bought it from AngloGold Ashanti in October 2020. Moab Khotsong is also deep-level and carries the same exposure.
The company runs nine underground mines and one open-pit operation in South Africa alongside surface works.
Chief executive Beyers Nel said after the Moab Khotsong death that the company was deeply saddened and that nothing is more important than the safety of its people, and that it was committed to understanding the circumstances, learning from them and strengthening its efforts to prevent recurrence. The statements issued after each fatality this year have been close to identical.
The figures are not straightforwardly getting worse. Harmony recorded ten on-duty deaths in the first six months of 2025 alone, and six across its South African mines during the financial year to the end of June 2026.
The deaths are occurring during the best conditions the industry has seen in years. Gold has reached record or near-record levels, driven partly by geopolitical tension, making deep South African ore bodies that were marginal for decades profitable again and drawing investor money back into the sector.
Harmony is facing a separate matter at another operation. Two boys, aged nine and eight, drowned in dams at a Harmony mine on Aug. 29, according to local reporting, and their families set the company a deadline of Sept. 15 to engage with them before considering legal action over alleged negligence. Police have opened two inquest dockets.
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