Johannesburg - The Nama Khoi Municipality believes there might be more bodies trapped among the eight bodies that were found after a mining tunnel collapsed in the area.
Northern Cape police are investigating and searching for possible victims after the incident occurred on Wednesday.
Nama Khoi Municipality spokesperson Jason Milford, speaking to a broadcaster, said there was a need for the national government to regulate and provide relief for artisanal mining and grant permits. He said that might take illegal mining out of the equation.
However, Mineral Resources and Energy spokesperson Nathi Shabangu said Minister Gwede Mantashe had already published the Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Policy in 2022 for implementation in terms of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002.
Shabangu said one must also remember that this was new in South Africa, and there are challenges.
"People must refrain from equating illegal mining to artisanal and small-scale mining. There are procedures that need to be followed when applying," said Shabangu.
Milford said there could have been a number of reasons that the tunnel collapsed, but there was still a need to get experts on the ground. He said that from his perspective, they had experienced a lot of rainfall over the past couple of weeks, and some roads were swept away by strong currents.
"Some of the diggers (we call them diggers) are not all miners; they have never worked in mining, and unfortunately they don’t know how to manoeuvre themselves, and this might be the case as there are no support structures for these tunnels," said Milford.
He said that from time to time there had been incidents where tunnels had collapsed.
"This is an informal mining operation. We do not want to call it illegal necessarily, although it is to some extent. There had been talks in the past couple of years to grant permits to artisanal miners. As you know, most of these towns were dependent on mining activities, and most of the artisans here are miners. Recently there has been an influx of foreign nationals, and most of the people who are getting hurt are foreign nationals; it is alarming," said Milford.
He said most of those foreign nationals did not have known relatives, and it was difficult to report when they were hurt or had died. He said it was estimated that the South African economy and the mining sector lost approximately R49 billion in 2019 to illegal mining. It is further estimated that mining companies spend more than R2bn on security to prevent this illicit activity.
According to the policy on illegal mining, in the gold sector alone it is estimated that more than R70bn per annum in revenue is lost through the smuggling of this commodity.
The department said all mining and mineral processing activities must be undertaken within the applicable legal framework.
A multi-departmental body, the National Co-ordination and Strategic Management Team (NCSMT), had been established, and comprised representatives from DMR, SAPS, Intelligence Services, and the Department of Home Affairs.
The Star