Thandi Mazibuko
South Africa
Occupational Information
Occupation: Professional
Occupational Position: Superintendent, Mining Plant, Richards Bay Minerals, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto.
Professional History
Thandi is a plant superintendent at Mining Plant A, a mining plant operated by Richards Bay Minerals (RBM), a Rio-Tinto-owned mine on the northern coast of KwaZulu-Natal. RBM extracts and processes the heavy minerals that occur on the dunes north and south of Richards Bay using a wet-mining process. Ponds are created in the dunes several kilometres from the shoreline. On each pond floats one or more dredgers and a concentrator. RBM currently operates four of these plants.
She manages the operational aspects of one of the plants, and leads a team of more than 40 permanent employees and 30 contractors. She is a metallurgist by profession, with a BTech in Metallurgical Engineering which she obtained in 2010. Thandi began her career in mining in 2005 as an operations assistant. In 2007 she was awarded a bursary to study metallurgy, and between 2010 and 2014 she has worked as a process metallurgist in several sections of the mine. She then moved to operations as an operations specialist before becoming a superintendent in 2015.
Qualifications
B-Tech in Metallurgical Engineering
Programs
2016 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow