Time to put a stop to illegal mining

Once again, yesterday we woke up to headlines about 20 bodies, believed to be of illegal miners popularly known as “zama zamas”, being found.

Police discovered the decomposed corpses in two locations in North West, six were outside an old mine shaft in Orkney and the other 14 were on Ariston Road, close to a railway line.

“All the deceased are suspected to be illegal miners, commonly known as ‘zama zamas’, operating in obsolete shafts in Orkney and Stilfontein… the deceased suffered severe body burns,” Brig Sabata Mokgwabone told this publication.

He said they had opened a case and postmortems would be conducted to ascertain the cause of death of the 20 miners.

This was one of many incidents of illegal miners being found dead, they either die in turf clashes with others or from inhaling toxic chemicals while mining underground in disused mines.

Two weeks ago, News24 reported on four suspected illegal miners who lost their lives when a fight ensued at a mine in Mpumalanga. In February last year, we covered the story of nine miners who were killed allegedly by another group over who had the right to mine in an old mine in Matholeville, a township in the west of Gauteng. Ten people were arrested in connection with these deaths. 

The department of mineral resources said in 2016 there were 6,000 disused mines in the country and they were busy rehabilitating at least 10 a year. We welcome the bit the government is doing annually but call on them to hold to account companies that benefited from the mines but did not follow guidelines of post-mine closer rehabilitation when they abandoned them.

Abandoned, unsecured shafts pose a danger to residents who might fall into them and are a haven for illegal mining cartels who destabilise peace in nearby communities. Too many lives have been lost during illegal mining, we also call on the police to beef up security around old mines.

The economy is also losing millions of rand in uncollected revenues from the illegal mining activities. The sooner the crime is prioritised by law enforcement agencies, the sooner illegal mining will be eradicated in the country. Deaths and financial losses would then be avoided.