People from Pakistan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the latest nationalities to join the illegal mining activities known as Zama Zamas in the North West province.
The provincial MEC for Community Safety and Transport Management, Wessels Morweng, said this on Wednesday. He was in Stilfontein delivering the third quarter crime statistics for 2024/2025.
Morweng said while the province had fewer criminal cases than the previous year, illegal mining was one of the areas where his department and the police needed to step up their efforts.
Illegal mining still a problem
“Not surprisingly, one of these is in the area of illegal mining. As had been emphasised before, illegal mining is costing the economy of the country well over R70-billion annually in gold mining alone. Added to this, illegal mining has other causal ramifications, with sinkholes the common immediate detriment,” Morweng said.
Early this year, police completed what they called a successful operation. More than 1,000 illegal miners were arrested and 78 bodies retrieved from an unused mine in Stillfontein.
“The problem is not completely over. It has been significantly stemmed. Just as we were having a collective sigh of relief on the back of the Stilfontein operation success, another similar challenge reared its head elsewhere in the province. The Vala Umgodi operation had recently arraigned 22 illegal mining suspects in the Bojanala District.”
New face of illegal miners
Morweng said of particular interest was the nationalities of the arrested illegal miners. He said the latest arrests established the new composition of illegal miners. They were no longer made up of those from Africa, but from Asia as well.
“Of those arrested previously, nationalities varied from Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi. Now, added to those nationalities, we have some from the DRD, Ethiopia, and Pakistan,” Morweng said.
Despite the crime reduction, Morweng said certain crime patterns were more prevalent in some areas.
Dr Kenneth Kaunda District
He said Bojanala continued to lead, particularly with serious and violent crimes. Rustenburg appears in the top 12 stations in the country.
Dr Kenneth Kaunda District was declared a provincial hotspot for illegal mining, sexual offenses, and all assaults.
Morweng said the district has both operational and non-operational gold mines. This contributes to the problem of illegal mining and associated crimes.
