Q: Could this tragedy have been avoided if the government had done its job properly?
A: Unambiguously, yes. The government has facilitated the environment in which this illegal mining takes place.
Q: By failing to seal and monitor abandoned mines, for instance?
A: Yes. If this mine had been closed properly and if there had been some monitoring of what’s been going on there these shafts would have been sealed and there wouldn't have been mining. But as it is they've been mining there now for 10 years, literally several thousand workers being raised and lowered in the shaft by teams of people on the surface. An entire economy is being sustained through illegal mining.
Q: Where were the police?
A: It’s inconceivable that the police have not been aware of these activities.
Q: Would it be fair to say a lack of post-mining economic planning created the desperate circumstances in mining communities like Stilfontein that criminal syndicates have exploited?
A: Yes, the economies of these gold mining towns collapsed with the decline of gold mining. They’ve retrenched tens of thousands of workers, most of them Mozambicans and Basotho, left without jobs, without income. These communities are impoverished.
Q: Making illegal mining inevitable?
A: Well, it has. Then there’s also the failure to crack down on the criminal syndicates that facilitate it. The people who buy this gold and use it for money laundering.
Q: To what extent have politicians and police been involved with these syndicates?
A: It is inconceivable that the police are not aware of these operations. They are clearly visible. There’s a team of 40 or 50 men operating the rope hoist which has been raising and lowering men and supplies all day, every day for the past 10 years. It’s upfront, in broad daylight, happening all the time, and everybody knows it’s happening. I understand there is footage of police forcing miners underground at gunpoint.
Q: Is it likely that politicians have been unaware of this?
A: For over 100 years there was only one licensed gold refinery in SA. In the past 10 years the department of mineral resources & energy has issued licences for 182 refineries, ostensibly companies that recycle gold. It’s interesting that there’s a connection between Buffelsfontein and some of these refineries, which are perfect for laundering illegally mined gold. The other way illegally mined gold is being laundered is through the issue of mining permits.
Q: So there’s collaboration with the department and the police?
A: They are certainly facilitating these activities.
Q: Yet they and the minister in the presidency are branding the illegal miners at Stilfontein as criminals who don’t deserve to live?
A: And because they’re regarded as outlaws, though theirs are statutory, not common law, offences, they receive no protection from the state and are robbed, assaulted, murdered with impunity.
Q: So we shouldn’t be surprised the police took so long to rescue them?
A: The police embarked on a strategy to starve these people out, as is made clear from a SAPS media statement on November 2. They also stopped a rope hoist from lowering supplies to them and bringing them out.
Q: Wasn’t their strategy to force them out?
A: Force them out how? There’s no means to get them out, so all they were doing was starving them to death.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.