-
An illicit mining van of the South African Police Service is pictured in Stilfontein in the North West on 13 November 2024.
Mining analyst David van Wyk says government needs to conduct audits of abandoned mines and ensure that the owners are prosecuted.
He has warned that illegal mining will continue as long as abandoned mines are not rehabilitated.
More than 4 000 suspected illegal miners have been trapped in mine shafts in Orkney and Stilfontein in the North West.
This after the police and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) launched Operation Vala Umgodi last month, preventing suspected illegal miners from accessing food and water.
Van Wyk says to successfully address the issue of illegal mining, the authorities need to understand the people who are involved in it.
“It’s also a myth that these are all foreigners, they are not all foreigners, many of them are South Africans and there are mixed groups in these groups. There’s a lot of myths that they have been put by government and by the Department of Mineral Resources because the department does not want to deal with this economic problem. Therefore, it turns it into a security and policing problem. And it’s not a policing and security problem.”
