“It is unacceptable that an emerging crime trend, such as illegal mining, does not have tailored training courses to tackle the scourge. This is more alarming in the context of the socio-economic impact of illegal mining in the country,” said Ian Cameron, the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Police.

The committees met to consider a petition from M Clarke, MP, on behalf of residents, calling for the urgent implementation of an action plan to address illegal mining in Ward 92, City of Ekurhuleni, in Gauteng. The committees acknowledged the successes achieved through Operation Vala Umgodi and the arrests achieved. But the impact has not been far-reaching, and the scourge continues to affect communities.

While the committees acknowledged that illegal mining is not primarily a police challenge, they highlighted that a multidisciplinary approach should be enhanced. This will include the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, to ensure mining houses are held accountable for decommissioned mines and the rehabilitation of unused mines. The Department of Home Affairs should ensure adherence to immigration laws and ensure tighter border control while the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment should ensure adherence to South Africa’s environmental laws.

The committees further called for a shift in focus towards dismantling the criminal syndicates that lie behind illegal mining by targeting the kingpins orchestrating these operations. “Focusing only on foot soldiers will not yield long-term results, particularly given high unemployment and poverty, which make it easy to recruit desperate workers,” the committees noted.

In addition, the committees stressed the importance of cross-border collaboration between local law enforcement and their regional counterparts to facilitate intelligence sharing, joint planning and disruptive operations across national borders. Furthermore, the committees encouraged the SAPS to work with good private security companies and the South African National Defence Force as a force multiplier to supplement SAPS’ thin resources.

The committees also reiterated the need to enhance the resourcing of all departments involved, to ensure they are capacitated to respond effectively to illegal mining and related crimes.

As part of the response to the petition, each committee will direct formal questions to relevant departments. The responses will be compiled into a comprehensive report, which will be tabled in the National Assembly for further consideration and action.

The post Lack of SAPS training to tackle illegal mining ‘incomprehensible’ appeared first on ProtectionWeb.

On Saturday, Vala Umgodi operators working together with mine security, were called to a mine near Hennenman, where three men emerged from underground.

“The suspects were found in possession of antiretroviral (ARV) medication and mining equipment, indicating their involvement in illegal mining activities,” said Free State police adding that four illegal foreign nationals were also arrested in Allanridge, Virginia and Thabong.

The operation continued in the Khuma section, where two more males, both 19 years old, were arrested. They were also found in possession of gold-bearing material and gold processing equipment.

On Thursday, 21 August 2025,  Vala Umgodi operational members engaged in a disruptive operation in Van Standensrus. Police on patrol near the border spotted two bakkies loaded with sheep wool.

“Officers intercepted the vehicles and found large quantities of sheep wool. The 45-year-old driver of a Ford Ranger had a load valued at an estimated R25000, while the 31-year-old driver of a Toyota Hilux had a load valued at approximately R15000.
“Neither driver was able to produce receipts to verify ownership of the property. The two individuals will be processed by the Stock Theft Unit and charged with possession of suspected stolen property,” said the police.

The police urged communities  to urge community members to report any suspicious activities related to illegal mining, illicit trade, and cross-border crime. Information can be reported anonymously to the SAPS Crime Stop number at 08600 10111 or via the MySAPS App.

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The arrests were made for offences including bribery, possession of drugs, trespassing, possession of illicit cigarettes, contravention of the Immigration Act, possession of gold-bearing material and illicit mining.

​On Sunday morning, Vala Umgodi operatives, in collaboration with the Department of Home Affairs, swooped on Virginia and Meloding.

“During a search of a salon, a 32-year-old female, who is an illegal foreign national, was arrested. Two other individuals were also taken into custody after their documents were verified as fraudulent by Home Affairs personnel,” the South African Police Service (SAPS) said in a statement on Monday.

​According to the police, the team proceeded to search sleeping quarters at the back of the complex. In three units occupied by undocumented foreign nationals, drugs, including mandrax, crystal meth and rock, with an estimated street value of R150 000, were discovered.

Three suspects, aged between 24 and 36, including two foreign nationals and one female, were arrested for possession of drugs and contravention of the Immigration Act.

​In a separate operation in Meloding, two undocumented foreign nationals were arrested after being found inside tuck shops. All seven suspects arrested in Virginia and Meloding face charges ranging from possession of drugs to contravention of the Immigration Act.

​“A proactive team was also deployed to a mine where three undocumented males were observed engaging in illicit mining activities. They were arrested and a quantity of what is believed to be gold-bearing material was seized.

​“Furthermore, on 16 August, two teams, VOC 1 and VOC 2 [Venue Operational Centre], conducted disruptive operations in Viljoenskroon and Hoopstad.

“These operations resulted in the arrest of 12 undocumented foreign nationals found at various tuck shops in the two towns. Additionally, a 45-year-old foreign national was arrested after being found in his tuck shop with illicit cigarettes,” the police said.

​Also on 16 August, a combat team on patrol in Ventersburg arrested a foreign national on the N1, who was looking for a hitch-hike to Cape Town. A second charge of corruption was added after he attempted to bribe the police with R500.

​In another operation on 16 August in Virginia, a team working in collaboration with mine security arrested three suspects, aged between 37 and 28 years. The suspects were found on mine premises engaged in illicit mining activities and were in possession of gold-bearing material and illegal gold processing equipment.

“The multi-disciplinary operations in Lejweleputswa and surrounding municipalities are ongoing. All suspects are expected to appear in their respective magistrates courts soon,” the police said.

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According to SAPS, the Primrose Police Station has conducted 61 targeted operations against illegal mining in the past 19 months – 44 in 2024 and 17 so far this year. These have resulted in 110 criminal cases being opened, the seizure of 111 firearms, more than 1 700 rounds of ammunition, and the arrest of 676 undocumented persons. Police also confiscated nearly 1 700 pieces of illicit mining equipment, 218 generators, and liquor valued at more than R7.8 million.

SAPS said its efforts have been supported by regular stakeholder engagements, including a multi-disciplinary meeting in October 2024 with the Department of Community Safety and the Gauteng Premier’s Office to establish a unified approach to tackling the so-called Zama Zamas. Joint operations continue with the Provincial and Ekurhuleni District Visible Policing units, alongside the Primrose Community Policing Forum.

In June this year, police identified new illegal shafts believed to be part of a wider underground network. However, SAPS admitted that the nature of illegal mining has shifted towards extensive underground blasting, posing challenges due to a lack of specialised training and equipment for policing such environments. The department also reported two recent violent incidents targeting officers during arrests, in which firearms and ammunition were recovered.

SAPS stressed that illegal mining remains a national crisis requiring a coordinated, multi-departmental response. It rejected claims that it has failed to respond to the community’s written complaints, stating that the operational record demonstrates an active and ongoing effort to address the problem.

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Ntsokolo, a 40-year-old father of six children, survived underground for 18 days with no food except scraps of expired goods. He said he would be willing to testify during upcoming hearings of the SAHRC, but had not yet been approached.

A date for the SAHRC hearings has yet to be announced, but the 30 May deadline for public submissions has closed.

In an interview, Ntsokolo said he witnessed fellow miners succumb to hunger and eat human flesh. This corroborates media reports and affidavits from several miners that were submitted to the Constitutional Court.

“We tried to tell them, hey man, you cannot do that. They said these human bodies are like pork,” said Ntsokolo. Miners were drinking brack salty water, he said.

During Operation Vala Umgodi, the police were assigned to “smoke out” illegal miners from the hijacked gold mine. The operation garnered global attention in January, when images were broadcast showing survivors – and body bags – being pulled to the surface from shaft 11 in a metal cage during a court-ordered rescue operation.

“Everyone wanted to come out… Everyone was like, ‘Being in jail is much better than being in this jail of the mine.’”

Ntsokolo made his break 1.2km underground by making his way to Shaft 10.

“I told myself, I am not going to die here. I have to go out. God, please help me, I am not going to die here.”

He surfaced five days later, on Christmas Day, and was arrested immediately.

“After what we’ve been through, when we got to the surface, the police were pointing guns at us. They saw us as hardcore criminals,” he said.

Ntsokolo was charged with trespassing and illegal mining. On 29 May 2025, he was sentenced to seven months in prison or a R7,000 fine. He said he spent four days behind bars while arranging payment.

“I’m ready to tell the Human Rights Commission everything that happened,” he said. “They need to know the truth.”

Amid a death toll of at least 93, the government’s Natjoints police-led operation is accused of effectively trapping illegal miners underground for months without food, water or medicine.

At the time, the police presented a united front. But, months later, and with the HRC inquiry under way, it seems some police officers might speak out about alleged wrongdoing.

Johannes Dire, North West Provincial Secretary Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU), said that the union is aware of accusations of misconduct within the police. But he said the inquiry would likely clear the police of wrongdoing.

“Our members acted within the confinement of the law, and therefore, POPCRU supports (the inquiry),” he said.

“Police officers are used to external investigation, and it wouldn’t be a new issue.” But the union would support whistleblowers, as it had always done, he said.

This reporter visited Stilfontein numerous times from January to April 2025, interviewing miners, civil society organisations and police officers.

An officer who is facing serious legal challenges spoke to GroundUp anonymously, out of fear of reprisal.

He claimed that if Operation Vala Umgodi hadn’t blocked the community from lowering food into the mines, lives could have been saved.

“People died because those officers chose power over humanity.”

He said members of the Vala Umgodi task force removed ropes used by community members to deliver supplies to trapped miners, cutting off their lifeline.

“They didn’t just target illegal miners — they robbed them, beat them, took their IDs and passports, even when valid. And they did it with soldiers by their side,” he claimed.

Tensions ran high between local police, like this officer, and officers deployed from other provinces. The officer claimed locals were often excluded from Vala Umgodi due to suspicion of corruption.

“There are corrupt officers, yes. Some used police vans to deliver food to the miners. But not all of us were corrupt,” he said. “We were willing to help, but we were shut out.”

Dire confirmed that POPCRU had received “a number of complaints” about strife between police, many of which were “addressed expeditiously”.

“The unfortunate part has always been that the result of operations creates overwhelming situations at the police stations. That’s why maximum capacity is needed,” he said. “Still, we are open to external investigations.”

He added that local officers wished to be part of Operation Vala Umgodi, but that was “impossible due to the magnitude of the operation”.

SAPS police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe responded: “No local police officer was excluded. The reason we utilise dedicated teams is to ensure we don’t remove resources from local police stations so that day-to-day policing continues with required capacity.”

A pillar of the inquiry is likely to be testimony from critics of the operation who have stated that miners who died were trapped inside the mine because they were too weak and too far away from the exit shafts.

During the standoff at Stilfontein, the government defended the operation as essential to fight crime. Vala Umgodi involves multiple departments and has been rolled out in numerous provinces, with operations ongoing.

Police said that exit points were established for resurfacing.

And in a statement in December, Natjoints said that miners had the “capability to exit the underground tunnels independently … Their delayed emergence appears to be a tactic to evade arrest by law enforcement agencies.”

After the mass retrieval of bodies in January, Mineral and Petroleum Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe said the miners had gone underground on their own volition.

“If you go to a dangerous place, such as a neglected mine, and stay there for about three months, starving yourself to death, how does that become the responsibility of the state?” he told the media, adding that the mine owners — the Chinese-owned Buffelsfontein Gold Company — should be held accountable.

In a March parliamentary reply, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu said that in Stilfontein, 1,916 miners had been arrested and charged with illegal mining, illegal immigration, possession of gold-bearing material and unlawful possession of explosives. The total cost of the operation, he said, had been more than R36.7-million.

Now, in June, the North West health department has begun mass burials of unclaimed bodies.

Besides investigating the conduct of Vala Umgodi officers, the HRC will also examine the impact of illegal mining on human rights in communities, and gaps in the policy framework on artisanal mining.

Civil society grouping MACUA (Mining Affected Communities United in Action) which raised the alarm last year over the plight of the miners underground, plans to testify. In a damning written submission to the HRC, MACUA refers to the “Stilfontein massacre”, claiming that “state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings” had been carried out under the pretext of combatting illegal mining.

MACUA says the HRC did not respond fast enough.

For those who lived through the operation — on the ground or underground — accountability is long overdue.

“I’m very hurt by what the government and police did to us,” Ntsokolo said. “We’re still waiting for someone to care.”

“I said we must help those who are weak to get out first”
Ayanda Ndabini, 36, spent nearly a month trapped underground in Shaft 11. He went down on 20 September with food, paraffin, and a rough plan. But by November, everything had collapsed — supplies, the communication systems, sense of time, and, almost, the will to live.

“Food finished and we started trying to look for a way to other shafts, like Margaret Shaft, trying to check if we can find a way to get out from there,” he said. “But we failed … we didn’t find any way leading there. We then came back and sat down,” he said during an interview in mid-February.

What followed was a slow unravelling of human dignity in the underground dark. “Some people then started eating cockroaches. They would hide when eating them, but you’d see them gathering cockroaches and putting them in bottles. Then they’d make a fire and fry them.”

With paraffin gone, fires were lit with rotting timber left behind by mine engineers.

Communication with the surface, once maintained by handwritten notes passed through a bucket-and-rope system, disintegrated in early November. “We started panicking when we noticed that instead of the rope coming in there [were] stones being thrown in — and then we immediately knew that there might be police outside.”

Then there was a shift after community leaders pleaded with police, and the miners got word that help had arrived and they would begin to be pulled out. They pleaded for food, and they were given supplies of porridge and Mageu.

On 12 November, a letter came, asking Ndabini to exit. “I said we must rather help those who are weak and can die anytime to get out first. We already had one dead body. I was hungry too, but I chose those who were weak to go first.”

The group began prioritising the most vulnerable. Then on the morning of 15 November, Ndabini surfaced. “I told them I’d report everything to the community as soon as I got out and ask for more food to be lowered. People underground were perishing — many couldn’t even stand. Even those we brought up were immediately taken to hospital.”

He claimed that food supplies were suspended again on 16 November, and resumed on 22 November.

Written by Nomazulu Moyo for GroundUp and republished with permission. The original article can be found here.

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Responding to a parliamentary question posed by Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) Member of Parliament (MP) Inkosi Cebekhulu, Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu provided clarification regarding high-level arrests under Operation Vala Umgodi and international engagement on cross-border illegal mining.

High-Level Arrests Under Operation Vala Umgodi

Referring to the earlier reply on 30 December 2024, Mchunu confirmed that Operation Vala Umgodi is specifically designed to disrupt and dismantle illegal mining operations on the ground. The individuals typically apprehended through this operation are frontline operatives rather than senior figures within organised criminal networks.

Given the nature of the operation and its tactical focus, the arrest of financiers or kingpins, those operating behind the scenes and benefitting financially, is considered highly improbable. As such, no total number of high-level arrests under Operation Vala Umgodi can be reported at this stage.

Engagement with International Partners on Cross-Border Illegal Mining

The South African Police Service (SAPS), through the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), has actively engaged with both regional and international partners to address the cross-border dimensions of illegal mining.

Key efforts include:

• Bilateral Cooperation: In the Free State, the DPCI holds bi-monthly bilateral meetings with authorities in Lesotho and with other South African provinces sharing borders, including the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. These meetings aim to enhance cross-jurisdictional coordination on illegal mining issues.

• United Nations Engagement: The DPCI participates in structures and initiatives under the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) focused on combatting illegal mining and the transnational trafficking of precious metals.

• Global Partnerships: The DPCI is currently involved in collaborative efforts with Switzerland and the United States, specifically targeting the international networks involved in illicit mineral trade.

• Regional Coordination via INTERPOL: Through INTERPOL, the DPCI engages with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the International Platinum Group Metals Association (IPA) to address cross-border syndicates and strengthen enforcement capacity.

In addition to these partnerships, the DPCI chairs the National Coordination and Strategic Management Team (NCSMT), which has developed the National Integrated Illegal Mining and Illicit Precious Metals Trafficking Strategy. This interdepartmental framework seeks to combat illegal mining holistically, involving entities such as the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE). The DMRE is specifically responsible for closing derelict and ownerless mines, a critical measure in curbing opportunities for illegal mining and mitigating environmental damage.

The DPCI is currently overseeing eight registered projects and two major investigations targeting illegal mining syndicates. Furthermore, its draft Illegal Mining Strategy is in the final stages of consultation and will soon be presented to the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security (JCPS) Cluster for approval.

Mchunu noted that while Operation Vala Umgodi has not yielded arrests of kingpins or financiers, broader inter-agency and international measures are being pursued to dismantle the complex networks behind illegal mining in South Africa.

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Zama zamas have ensnared recruits from Mozambique, deceived by the false promise of instant riches, says the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria.

ISS Intelligence and Terrorism expert Wilie Els told ProtectionWeb that the only way out of the zama zama conundrum is for South African Police Minister Senzo Mchunu to convene a national dialogue of all stakeholders.

In the meantime, the complex and well-oiled zama zama machine continues and is now focusing on a fresh crop of recruits identified and selected from increasing numbers of economic refugees crossing the border from Mozambique, says Els.

False promises are driven home initially not by the rifle-butts, starvation and money-withholding tactics of elite enforcers underground but by beguiling recruitment methods well-versed in persuasion tactics.

ProtectionWeb can now reveal previously-unknown zama zama organisation, logistics, recruitment and enforcement techniques. These shed new light on how zama zamas recruit, organise, operate and exploit extensive corruption not only with State-embedded actors, but also a symbiotic relationship with legal miners that provides logistic support underground and even moves their illegal product through legal channels.

Far from being in disarray due to on-gong high-profile Police action, zama zamas are in reality merely transfixing law enforcement with rear-guard actions whilst recruitment and business continue elsewhere.

With roots in land-locked Lesotho and apartheid’s mining migrant labour system, criminal gangs from Lesotho have long sown terror and violence and marketed and managed the modern slavery of the zama zamas throughout Southern Africa.

They rule a vast slave-driven under-empire and “Glittering Axis” of illegal mining and trading radiating from Lesotho through the adjacent goldfields of South Africa’s central Free State Province and beyond.

This extends to creating and managing a lucrative informal economy centred on supplying zama zamas with food, sex workers, medicine and other needs – loaves of bread compacted to 10% of their original size and duct-taped to the bodies of legal miner “food mules” and delivered underground at 20 to 30 times the original price – and often through normal mining channels.

This is achieved by structuring and managing exactly as would be expected of the perfect intelligence organisation – compartmentalisation, rigid and ruthless social control, and insidious deception and blending of operations with legitimate mining persons and activities, says Els.

And that’s only at operational level – State-embedded actors also create an enabling environment for illegal mining and porous policing and prosecution by exerting influence.

ProtectionWeb can reveal the flexible yet effective structures and enforcement techniques utilised to manage zama zama operations, down to their three basic operational levels and leadership terms used:

• At the national apex of the R47-billion per annum South African illegal gold industry stand the Nthlekos – crime overlords and kingpins with State and industry-embedded figures supporting them.
• Then more or less approximating provincial borders are the Nuni – those who coordinate intelligence and plan operations broadly in terms of focus and setting production quotas.
• At grass-roots operational level are the actual operators and enforcers known as Mackenzies.

Mackenzies operate in devolved and insulated cell-structures, organising weapons, deciding which gangs to use as enforcers, sourcing guns and weapons and organising logistics.

Mackenzies control actual operations of the zama zamas underground, ruthlessly enforcing set production quotas, enforcing discipline in a mix of direct violence and applying Famo music culture underground in resilience-building actions.

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An estimated 6,100 closed mines are distributed across the country. Although closed, they are not sealed. Residual gold remains in these ruins, and is extracted by miners who come from across the region. They are mainly unlicensed or undocumented migrants, and work in groups that range from a few dozen individuals to highly organised teams of hundreds.

Television stations and social media feeds carried horrendous images of the emaciated figures of the living and the dead as they were brought to the surface in mid-January 2024, nearly six months after the operation was started.

The tales of what the police operation inflicted on these mineral gleaners are harrowing. Reports of illness and starvation, of weeks in fetid air next to decomposing corpses, as well as the eating of insects and even human flesh, were entered into evidence before the constitutional court. A case was brought before the court by an organisation seeking to halt the operation on human rights grounds.

This wasn’t the first siege undertaken as part of Operation Vala Umgodi. But it was the first sustained blockade.

What could lead to the adoption of nearly medieval military tactics in a nation with otherwise robust constitutional protections for human rights as well as strong regulations governing mine closure and rehabilitation? And why do so many South African citizens appear to agree with this brutal strategy? Who are the “criminals” captured as a result of such extreme measures?

I am an anthropologist and I’ve been studying the social life and history of South African gold mining for nearly three decades. I’ve also made a film with and about informal miners.

The problems posed by informal mining will not be solved by treating it as a question of criminality or border security. It must be understood in relation to the history of the formal industry, and in terms of regional and global economic forces. This includes the problem of demonetisation (the substitution of digital tokens for hard currency), rising rates of personal debt, exclusion from digital infrastructures and protracted local economic crises.

The world of the miners

Over the years I’ve come to know many individuals who have gone underground in search of what’s been left behind by large scale industrial mining. They come from the same places as did many of their forebears who worked in the formal industry. In its heyday South Africa’s mines employed nearly half a million people. They came from Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi, as well as the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

Some are former mine workers, now unemployed. Some are farmers or fishermen whose livelihoods have been made untenable by drought and floods, or by monetary and political crises at home.

These are the people on the lowest rung of informal mining’s ladder. Like most industries, this one is highly stratified. Above such desperate individuals are the criminal syndicates who traffic in arms, people, narcotics and gold. And, as journalists and even the World Gold Council acknowledge, they are enmeshed in webs of corruption. These include bankers, as well as management and security forces of formal mines, smelting and reclamation companies, buyers and traders, and smugglers who carry gold from South Africa to Dubai.

Those webs also include police and government officials with the authority to intervene. Or to profit handsomely for not intervening.

Yet, the police strategy and public sentiment in South Africa treat the gangsters and their virtually enslaved labourers as equally culpable for the economic, material and environmental devastation that afflicts the nation. And they largely ignore the depredations that resulted from the industry’s formal operations over a century and a half.

The context

The horrors in Stilfontein and elsewhere need to be understood in a global context. According to a 2024 report by the World Gold Council, 20% of the world’s newly mined gold comes from small scale and artisanal production. And an astonishing 80% of all the people who work in the gold sector worldwide do so as informal or artisanal mineworkers. Many work in the shadow of the law under extremely coercive circumstances.

In 2022, that meant about 20 million people were eking a living as small scale miners of gold. (Another 20 million or so work in similar fashion to obtain other minerals.) They, in turn, supported an estimated 270 million people. More people than live in Brazil, or about seven times the population of Canada.

These numbers reflect rapid growth in recent decades. The World Gold Council measures that upsurge from 1993, the year that triggered the era of globalisation with the fall of Soviet socialism and the emergence of new regionalisms (the North American Free Trade Agreement, the European Union).

What we see around the world today, in tariff wars, isolationalist nationalism and the vilification of migrants, can be traced to the same period, when capital began to fly around the world and multinational corporations began to shed their commitments to local communities of labourers.

South Africa’s story

Black workers in South Africa experienced this trend in acute ways.

The country’s mineral economy was defined by the compound system, in which mineworkers lived in single-sex hostels and travelled between the mines and their residential homes on short-term contract bases. Black workers were heavily dependent on the corporation for social goods that the state was not providing because of racial policies.

Over the past four decades many South African mining corporations, like those elsewhere, shrank their work forces and moved to subcontract labour for those remaining. In lieu of benefits, they offered workers more “freedom”. Many workers desired this. But freed from longer-term contracts and from the social goods extracted by unions, they also became vulnerable to other forces. And the HIV/AIDS epidemic afflicted communities with terrible strain.

Personal indebtedness rose dramatically. For those without documented citizenship or resident status, accessing credit meant turning to shadowy lenders, including gangs, who charged and enforced merciless interest rates. This in turn strengthened the power of the gangs, long part of the landscape in southern Africa.

The undocumented and the very poor have also often been forced into a realm of criminality where they depend on illegally mined and unminted gold. These are the people who are most easily preyed upon by armed criminal groups.

Popular mythology in South Africa attributes much violent crime to the “zama zamas” (the name means “to keep on trying” or “to gamble”). But there is no evidence of this.

In my observation, violence around the abandoned mines is mainly committed by gangs and their collaborators, who also coerce zama zamas in their underground labours, extracting from them the gold they manage to take from underground, charging security fees to enter shafts and to exit them, organising coerced prostitution, trafficking in child labour, and supplying the dynamite, the mercury, and the pneumatic drills in larger operations.

This is why the World Gold Council report is correct to speak of the exploitation of small scale and artisanal miners. It recommends that states prosecute the buyers, smelters and bankers, as well as political authorities who profit from this merciless economy.

Solutions

Laudable as these efforts to redirect prosecutorial zeal are, the solution to the problem of informal economies is not policing. Nor is it regulation.

In places where gold is found in surface deposits, licensing by the state can provide systems of oversight and a regulatory framework to protect workers. So can negotiated settlements with “criminal” gangs, who become more like corporate institutions in the process.

But in South Africa the possibility of self-organised mining appears to have passed. Rises in the price of gold have led to more intense and militarised competition among gangs. In addition, South Africa’s gold mines – the deepest in the world – aren’t hospitable sites for either licensing or decentralising strategies. It is too dangerous and too expensive to secure the thousands of miles of underground tunnels.

The solution must begin with massive regional economic repair, including debt relief for individuals and for sovereign states which can’t spend on social goods because of their interest obligations on foreign loans. It must include the stabilisation of local economies, and reinvestment in climate-resilient agriculture.

And migration needs to be rethought and decriminalised. The past of the gold mines is a history of migration. The future, shaped by climate change, will also be a story of migration. Above all, therefore, a change in consciousness is required.

This story was republished with permission from TheConversation, the original article can be found here.

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Watching from a distance with other journalists at the scene, forensic workers dressed in full personal protective equipment were seen loading at least five body bags into a nearby truck on Tuesday.

Activists claimed [166] miners have been rescued [since Monday 12 January 2024] and [78] bodies have been recovered.

The rescue is being conducted by the company, Mines Rescue Services, using a cage attached to a huge crane to reach deep into the mineshaft. Police cordoned off the area, preventing media and community members from accessing the scene.

The rescue operation commenced on Monday after an urgent court application was brought by Zinzi Tom, a community member whose brother, Ayanda Tom, is among the hundreds of miners who have been underground since July.

The High Court on Friday ordered the state to finalise and send a service-level agreement and a letter of appointment to Mines Rescue Services for the rescue to begin.

“I have mixed feelings about how this whole thing was handled. Why couldn’t they have started the rescue operation earlier? Maybe some lives could have been saved,” said Tom, who is yet to hear any word about her brother’s condition.

“One of the miners who was rescued [on Monday] said that he saw my brother two weeks ago but had not seen him since. As a family we are just praying that he is brought to the surface alive,” she said.

Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu and Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe also visited the site on Tuesday.

On the road to the mineshaft, community members and civil society organisations staged a picket, calling for accountability for what they say has been the State’s inaction and tardiness regarding the rescue operation.

During the ministers’ press conference, the media were briefly allowed closer to the site. Emaciated miners were being helped into a nearby ambulance. One miner was carried on a stretcher as he was unable to walk.

The two ministers’ motorcade was blocked by protesters, demanding the officials address them.

Addressing the crowd, president of the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa Mametlwe Sebei blamed the government and the ministers for the loss of life at the mine. Shielded by police, both ministers then left in their cars.

“These ministers think that they are above the law. They can’t even address people who have lost loved ones underground. We are not going to leave this situation as is; we are going to continue to demand accountability as people have been starved to death down there,” said Zethu Hlatshwayo from the Association of Artisanal Miners.

This article was reposted with permission from GroundUp, with an update from ProtectionWeb, the original photo essay can be found here.

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The miners were all Mozambican. Their clothes were torn and muddy. Some of them had bare feet. They had been climbing for several days up the giant steel girders that held a transport elevator in place when the mine was still operational.

The shaft is deeper than 1.5 km and no longer ventilated, emitting hot vapor that billows upwards like steam. The men were soaking wet and had cuts on their hands.

A reporter for Newzroom Afrika interviewed some of the men before they were taken into custody. They said that they had been hired as casual labourers, unaware this would lead them into some of the world’s deepest and most dangerous mines.

One man had been at a roadside area in Middelburg where unemployed people wait for gardening or construction jobs, he said, when some men pulled up in a white minibus and offered him work in Johannesburg. He hurriedly went home and said goodbye to his wife, with whom he has four children. This was his last contact with his family for three months.

Other men were similarly recruited in the townships of Diepsloot and Alexandra. The recruiters were said to be Basotho men.

Instead of stopping in Joburg, the minibus headed out of the city. “We started asking questions but they threatened us with guns,” the man from Middelburg said. They arrived in Stilfontein and were ordered to go underground.

In the past few years, Stilfontein has become an epicenter of South Africa’s illicit gold industry. The town lies just outside Klerksdorp on the N12 highway, dwarfed by hills of dumped rock and tailings from industrial mines that began operating in the 1950s.

Most of these mines have since been closed down due to declining profitability, though vast quantities of gold remain in the ground. Over the past decade, these abandoned shafts have been taken over by powerful gangs.

A mine security expert from the neighbouring town of Orkney, another zama zama hotspot, told GroundUp that a single shaft could have 500 men working inside, each mining 30 grams of gold per week. He stressed that these were conservative estimates. A gram of gold currently sells for about R1,000 on the black market, meaning that each shaft could generate upwards of R60-million monthly.

There are more than a dozen abandoned shafts surrounding Stilfontein, representing staggering returns for the syndicates controlling the trade. These groups also profit by selling food and other supplies — gumboots, batteries, shovels — to men underground at hugely inflated prices.

Analysts have estimated that illegal mining accounts for around a tenth of South Africa’s annual gold production, although some mining executives privately believe the true figure is even higher. Based on last year’s production statistics, this amounts to ten metric tons of gold, worth more than R15-billion at current gold prices.

This illicit economy endures for a variety of reasons. There are hundreds of disused shafts left behind by the mining industry. Government regulations around mine closures have been weakly enforced. Poverty and unemployment are high in former mining towns. Money from illegal gold mining has corrupted many agencies tasked with combating the issue.

Besides obtaining gold from abandoned shafts, syndicates smuggle zama zamas into operational mines, bribing employees to facilitate their entry.

The illicit gold trade is loosely organised into a pyramid structure. At the top are white-collar criminals who launder gold from zama zamas into the legal gold market, with a hierarchy of buyers and middlemen beneath them. The miners are at the bottom.

Over the past two decades, heavily armed gangs from Lesotho have muscled in on the shafts, operating as extortion rackets. In Stilfontein, working in abandoned mines became impossible without paying them steep fees.

One zama zama told GroundUp that it cost around R10,000 to enter and R25,000 to return. Local gold buyers would often front these expenses in return for a cut of the gold the miners produced. Many zama zamas became trapped in debt while underground, a cycle worsened by the high cost of food, which they paid for in gold. Some men could remain in the mines for months or years and come away with “nothing”, the zama zama said.

His own work for the syndicate involved roping men in and out of the shafts as a “cage operator”, the same term used on functioning mines for controlling the transport elevator. Sometimes he was sent underground to transport provisions to distant tunnels where zama zamas were living, trekking for hours in the darkness. This earned him a salary of R8,000 per month.

He grew up in Stilfontein’s township of Khuma, which was built for black mine labourers during apartheid and named after a Setswana word for “wealth”. His father had been a migrant labourer on the mines but returned to Mozambique after being retrenched in the early 2000s. His mother was unemployed, and to support his siblings he left school before matriculating. Now in his thirties, he has been a zama zama his entire adult life.

Initially he had dug for gold at the surface, but later he began working for a Basotho gang. He described seeing young men at the shafts who had been brought there unwillingly. Most were from Mozambique and Zimbabwe. “They say they don’t want to go underground,” he said. “We see them crying.”

He estimated that a third of the zama zamas he encountered were coerced into entering the mines. “You will take him down there by force. He will be beaten,” he explained.

One night last year, he started lowering a Zimbabwean teenager who was shaking with fear and unable to speak. The rope felt unusually light after a few hundred meters, so he asked some men to help pull it back up. The teenager had been trying to slow his descent by gripping the shaft’s metal frame with his thighs, slackening the tension on the rope. When they hauled him out, his testicles had been torn loose and were hanging from a flap of skin.

Over the past few months, a joint police and military operation in Stilfontein has attempted to force zama zamas out from underground by blocking their supply of food. To date, more than 1,300 miners have been arrested. More than 1,200 were from Mozambique and Zimbabwe. About 100 were undocumented children from neighbouring countries.

Most of these miners have come up via the elevator of a nearby functioning mine shaft. Some have said that they were held captive by gang members. A mine security official involved in the operation told GroundUp that Basotho men with assault rifles were guarding the tunnels that connect the shaft to abandoned mines and only allowing zama zamas to exit if they handed over their gold.

“Whenever they come out, they are paying,” the official said. He added that the gang was withholding food from miners who remained underground. Some have been surviving by eating toilet paper and toothpaste.

A few weeks ago, five young men climbed out from an abandoned shaft near Khuma, surprising a police guard stationed there. They reported travelling for three weeks through the tunnels after escaping the gang and then climbing vertically for more than a kilometre. An official who saw them described their bodies as “crushed”. He added: “We don’t know how they did it.”

The mine’s concrete headframe, a looming tower some 50 meters high, has not yet been torn down. Inside is the mouth of the shaft, a black hole in the earth surrounded by twisted metal and frayed ropes dangling over the edge.

The men said that they had been offered jobs and brought to Stilfontein without knowing what lay in wait for them.

The Mozambicans who came out on 24 November used a different shaft to exit. Its surface infrastructure was demolished in 2018 and the entrance sealed over, but zama zamas blew it open the following year. Prior to the clampdown, hitmen guarded the site from on top of an adjacent rock dump.

The mine is situated near another abandoned shaft where an informal operation to rescue zama zamas from underground began earlier in November. Mine rescue experts have since taken over, using specialised equipment.

The police have used the escape of the 14 men to argue that the zama zamas are not trapped and “simply refuse to resurface because they are avoiding arrest”, as a press release stated.

Hundreds of men are still believed to be underground. “They are caught between the police and the gangs,” a community leader in Stilfontein said. “It’s a double victimisation.”

Written by Kimon de Greef for GroundUp and republished with permission. The original article can be found here.

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