An African National Congress (ANC) MP on Wednesday responded to a statement by the acting director-general of mineral resources, David Msiza, that most illegal miners were foreigners, with a call to trap them underground.
“We must seal the mines while they are down there, moreover they are not South Africans.. they are from Lesotho, somewhere,” Motswaledi Matlala told the portfolio committee on mineral resources.
He added that sentences for people convicted of illegal mining were too lenient and urged that they be jailed for a “minimum of 40, 50 years”.
Fellow ANC MP Mandla Mandela hastened to say that Matlala’s views were not supported by the ruling party.
“It is not an ANC position. We would want to be very concerned about the lives of people, whether they are illegal foreigners or not,” Mandela said.
He added that the department must, however, find a solution to the outflow of minerals as a result of illegal mining syndicates from other countries.
“We have not taken on the sector of illegal mining operatives… (and) it has been seen to be in the hands of foreign illegals.”
Msiza said the department had called on the department of international relations for help and it had engaged with Zimbabwe and Botswana, and possibly Namibia, on the matter. He confirmed that it was clear that most of those who did the physical work of taking minerals from disused mines were foreigners, and some of them were the victims of syndicates who used them as forced labour.
“Most people who do the digging are not South Africans… some of them are held hostage, they have told us they cannot get out for a month.”
He said illegal mining activity would continue as long as there was little compelling companies to rehabilitate old mines, but added that law enforcement had become much stronger and jail sentences of between two and eight years had been imposed, compared to the negligible fines of years ago.
The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) had taken on cases and earlier this year arrested a man with unwrought gold worth R50 million hidden in the engine of a car used to smuggle the precious metal from North West province to Gauteng,
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