Standoff has revealed the scale of criminal infiltration of the informal mining industry
After weeks working – then later, trapped and starved by violent gang leaders – in the abandoned Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein, he clung weakly to a makeshift pulley winching him to safety this month. Above ground, a dozen men strained under the blistering morning sun, lifting the miner out inch by tenuous inch.
Relatives of miners and community members wait at a Stilfontein mine shaft where an estimated 4,000 illegal miners are trapped. Photograph: AP’s business-friendly coalition government has launched a crackdown as part of a plan to revive declining investment in mining, which accounts for 6.2 per cent of the country’s GDP.
Officials say Operation Vala Umgodi, or “Close the Pits”, will help eradicate a black market that drains the economy of as much as $1 billion annually, by some estimates. But in the sleepy town of Stilfontein, 160km west of Johannesburg, the impasse spotlights the difficulties ahead. Private companies have also pledged to crack down, as the shafts from abandoned mines sometimes link to others still being used by commercial operators.But the authorities’ “surrender or starve” siege tactic has angered rights groups, who have reignited a debate about unemployment and xenophobia in South Africa, and sought to force authorities to allow emergency supplies to be sent to the miners. At least four civil society groups are also camped alongside the police trucks outside the shafts.
Zama zamas are also sometimes approached to collude with legal operators and refiners in order to move the precious metal in a manner that enables tax evasion, he said.
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