Mining expert David Van Wyk says South Africa’s proposed General Mining Laws Amendment Bill fails to address the root causes of illegal mining, including unemployment, poverty and the exploitation of zama zamas by criminal syndicates.
By Mapaballo Borotho
South Africa is moving to strengthen its laws against illegal mining through the proposed General Mining Laws Amendment Bill, which seeks to introduce tougher penalties and make illicit mining a specific criminal offence.
But mining expert David Van Wyk says the proposed legislation may fail to address the root causes of the country’s illegal mining crisis.
Phemelo Motene spoke to Van Wyk on Kaya 959’s Point of View about the proposed legislation and whether tougher laws will help curb illegal mining in the country.
Van Wyk says the bill is aimed at criminalising illegal mining and increasing prison sentences and other penalties.
However, he argues that the people working underground are often vulnerable workers who are exploited by larger criminal networks.
“The problem is the syndicates are not underground. These men who work underground are cheap labour; they get 50% less than normal workers, they do not have medical aid or pensions, and they often get recruited by people who pretend to be subcontractors,” Van Wyk said.
He also questioned the effectiveness of recent operations involving the police and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), arguing that authorities have struggled to charge some of the suspected illegal miners they encounter.
According to Van Wyk, many of the miners could only be charged with trespassing.
“They could not charge them with anything besides trespassing, but if the mine is abandoned and does not have any owners, who are they trespassing against?” he asked.
They also cannot be charged simply for carrying bags of rocks, as those rocks still need to be processed to determine which raw minerals they contain.
Van Wyk says the country’s illegal mining crisis cannot be solved through legislation alone.
He believes policymakers are disconnected from the realities faced by people working in abandoned and disused mines.
“The people who make these laws are not in the mines; they are not seeing the labour issues that miners face on a daily basis, they are not seeing starving workers that have been retrenched and have nowhere to go,” he said.
He argues that the government needs to focus on the root causes of illegal mining before targeting the people operating underground.
Van Wyk says unemployment, mine retrenchments and the lack of economic opportunities continue to push vulnerable people towards illegal mining, while criminal syndicates benefit from their labour.
He believes law enforcement should focus more heavily on those recruiting and exploiting illegal miners, rather than treating the miners themselves as the main source of the problem.
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