Weeks after the Polokwane high court ordered her to halt operations in one area, companies linked to businesswoman and Musina municipal employee Maria Munyai continue to mine sand on a farm next to the Limpopo River.
The farm’s manager, Jacque Turner, said that the continued mining is environmentally destructive, illegal and the latest chapter in a years-long dispute with Munyai and her companies, which Turner has reported to the police scores of times and fought in court for years.
But Munyai said she has a right to mine on the farm Vrouwensbrom and the department of mineral resources & energy said she has stopped mining on the parcel of land that was subject to many of Turner’s complaints. The department said that two other companies with separate permits continue to mine on the farm.
Those companies are registered to Munyai’s family members and Turner believes that they are fronts for the same mining operation.
Just days after securing a judgment with costs against Munyai and the department on June 19, an exasperated Turner filmed trucks filled with sand, which he said was illegally mined by Munyai.
“The [department] will deny everything,” he said. “They are very reluctant and they are not abiding by the law. Before a permit is issued, there must be a consultation with the land owner and there must be [a] public participation [process]. They can’t rock up and say they have a permit, without that happening.”
Turner accuses Munyai of using two more recently registered companies, which continue to mine on his land, as a front.
“She is basically cheating the system because she knows the other company has broken many laws and there are many complaints about her company. Both of those new permits, we have put them under appeal,” he said.
Munyai has previously challenged Turner’s standing to report her, saying the sites she was mining did not belong to him. The court showed that Munyai’s original company continued mining, though its permit had lapsed in 2023.
In the absence of enforcement from the police and department, this meant little for her business operations. The court found that Munyai continued “with [her] mining activities unabatedly, while the authorities are sitting with their arms folded”.
Long-standing dispute
The bitter battle between Munyai and Turner is typical of long-standing tensions between the province’s farmers and environmentalists on the one side and sand mining entrepreneurs on the other.
Farmers’ associations, environmental activists and political parties have for years sounded the alarm over what they characterise as flagrant, illegal and destructive sand mining practices on the banks of the Limpopo. But the miners have heeded little, as they have learnt to skirt legal and environmental regulations and exploit the police and the government’s reluctance to act against them.
Despite Munyai’s defiance, the court order issued in June was unequivocal: her permits had expired and her company had also mined outside demarcated areas. She was also found to be in contempt of an earlier court order from 2020, which had demanded that she enter into mediation with Turner and restrict her mining to legal operations only.
But Munyai is no ordinary sand miner and seems to take such findings and orders in her stride. She has deep ties within the government. For 20 years, she has worked as an administrator at the Musina local municipality while building a parallel career in logistics, construction and sand mining.
In what may well present a conflict of interest, the Musina local municipality is, according to Munyai, also one of her businesses’ clients, buying her sand and bricks for construction projects.
When asked, the municipality responded that “activities by Mrs Munyai in supplying materials for RDP houses are not known to the municipality”.
Locals know her as a benefactor who buys clothes for poor children at Christmas.
Her company, TD Nhlamulo and His Mother Enterprises, initially held a mining permit, but that expired on March 17 2023. Instead of closing down, Munyai appeared to expand operations, including under the guise of new companies registered to family members.
In an interview last month, Munyai said the “river is no-man’s-land”. She insisted she had rights to the sand, despite the court order. She said government letters gave her permission to mine, but she could not produce evidence of her claim.
For Turner, who manages Tshipise Safaris on land adjoining the river, the fight has been exhausting. He said he has spent millions of rand on legal fees trying to stop Munyai from mining sand on his farm. At one point, Turner even installed concrete bollards to mark the legal boundary. Munyai’s workers allegedly tore them down and continued to dig.
Irreparable damage to land
Other farmers tell similar stories. Rhudzani Netswera, a pensioner near Thohoyandou, saw his three-hectare farm stripped bare by illegal sand miners in 2023. He spent his savings on lawyers, but lost everything.
“They left irreparable damage to my land,” he said.
The court found that more than 130 criminal complaints filed against Munyai at Tshamutumbu police station went nowhere. Officers told complainants to take their cases back to the department. But the department, in turn, referred them back to the police.
Judge Du Plessis wrote that it was “evident that neither the [department] nor the SAPS fulfilled their legislative obligations”.
The court reviewed and set aside any mining permit that might still be said to be valid or renewed. The court also ordered costs against Munyai and the state.
Agri SA’s Janse Rabie noted that sand mining permits are meant for small, two-year operations covering no more than five hectares. He explained that unscrupulous miners regularly apply for and are granted multiple mining permits adjacent to one another.
“Though this is not supposed to be allowed, it seems to be a standard way of clothing such applications with a semblance of legitimacy,” Rabie said.
The Aggregate and Sand Producers Association of SA estimates that the department is aware of barely half of the country’s illegal sand mines. Despite repeated reports from corporations and NGOs, most illegal operations carry on.
Despite being called out by judge Du Plessis for manifold failures of enforcement in the Munyai case, neither the police nor the department responded substantively to queries sent to them.
The police defended Maj-Gen Eddie van der Walt, commissioner of the Vhembe district, who was specifically called out in the judgment.
Police spokesperson Brig Shulani Mashaba said: “It must be stated categorically that the commissioner is not involved in the administration of mining licences since that is the competence of the [department]. The police and [department] are working closely to ensure that illicit mining activities are prohibited from taking place.”
The department's spokesperson, Johannes Mokobane, said: “A mining permit is valid for the period specified on the permit, but may not exceed two years. It may be renewed for three more periods of no more than a year each. A mining permit may only be issued if the mineral in question can be mined optimally for two years and the mining area does not exceed five hectares.”
In a follow-up query about what the department has done in light of the June judgment against it and Munyai’s continued operations, Mokobane said they were not aware of Munyai mining sand from the site nor whether her permit has lapsed.
Munyai did not answer or respond to several calls and messages about her continued operations in spite of the court order against her.
*This report has been produced by the Southern Africa Accountability Journalism Project, an initiative of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation with the financial assistance of the European Union. It can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.
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