Mining in focus
Regulating informal activities
Signs of Illegal miners are found throughout Africa. In picture is an illegal operation outside Karibib in
Namibia.
At the ceremony, Oliphant said: “The most
effective way of combatting illegal mining,
is legalising it. Once you formalise it, it
solves many problems.” He stressed that
the department would not grant permits
to underground illegal miners who damage
the structures of old shafts and compromise
[26] MINING MIRROR MARCH 2019
safety. Oliphant estimates that illegal mining
in the gold sector alone costs companies
over R70-billion a year. Regardless, the
Department of Mineral Resources (DMR)
has issued mining permits to informal miners
to extract gold from abandoned mine dumps
in Gauteng.
The Northern Cape Artisanal Miners’
Association (NCAMA) has worked to
formalise and regulate the activities of the
informal miners in the region. Members are
given an identification document in exchange
for a membership fee of R100, and the
organisation aims to provide pensions and basic
health care to members. It also ensures that
the informal miners are able to pay taxes to the
South African government from their earnings.
The plight of informal diamond miners
along the West Coast has made news headlines
throughout 2018. Most of these informal miners
still operate under the cover of night or out of
sight from the mine security and police patrols.
Most informal miners operate in shallow surface
excavations, but some dig tunnels that inevitably
result in cave-ins, collapses, and ultimately,
fatalities. These incidents have thwarted
attempts of this community to also obtain
mining permits from the DMR.
The initiative to hand out mining permits
to illegal and informal miners, also known
as zama-zamas, started in 2016, after several
miners died, trapped in an abandoned gold
mine in Langlaagte, Johannesburg. The then
Mining Minister Mosebenzi Zwane vowed to
begin the process of giving illegal gold miners
permits as a means to formalise that trade.
Mining analyst Peter Major was sceptical,
however, about the move to legalise zama-
zamas, saying that a more comprehensive
policy of dealing with the causes of the illegal
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