Predicting the future of gold mining in South Africa has become easy these days. With a lot of conviction, I can forecast that our production will continue to decline. Having peaked in 1970, it has fallen to a 109-year low of 167 tons in 2012, at which point Peru overtook us in the global ranking. Forecasting seems particularly easy at this point in time because, for exactly 20 years now, SA's declining output has followed a distinct linear pattern (if we disregard the effect of the 2012 strike). In itself, this is highly remarkable since it has completely disregarded the law of price elasticity: no supply response at all following bullion's spectacular price increase after 2001.