karabo mpho

[Barry Bateman @barrybateman]

I've sad it before and I'll say it again - throwing the South African National Defence Force at illegal mining is about as helpful as throwing the South African National Defence Force at gangsterism in the Western Cape. It fundamentally misdiagnoses the problem and will never work.

Illegal mining is not simply a problem of people mining without permits. It is well-organised crime.

Whenever illegal mining comes under heightened scrutiny, particularly after incidents such as the recent shooting on the West Rand in which 17 people were killed, the response tends to follow a familiar pattern. More police officers are deployed on the ground or, as we have now heard, the South African National Defence Force is brought into whatever operation is underway.

But an important part of the discussion is consistently missing. Whenever we see arrests of illegal miners, the images are invariably the same: dishevelled, filthy, sorry-looking people being pulled out of holes in the ground, often without shoes, before being processed through the criminal justice system. Frequently, their immigration status becomes an immediate focus.

But those people are only one part, and probably the lowest part, of an organised crime operation. The investigations, or at least what we see publicly of them, seldom appear to move meaningfully in either direction from the miners themselves.

Consider first what lies below or behind them in the supply chain.

Illegal miners operate in an environment in which they require tools and materials to conduct their trade. They need explosives. They need chemicals. They need equipment and machinery to extract and refine ore. All of this has to come from somewhere.

There must be suppliers who enable them to do what they do. Who supplies the explosives? Who supplies the chemicals? Who provides the equipment? Who transports these materials to mining areas? Who pays for them?

That supply leg forms part of the organised crime enterprise. Yet it seldom appears to be exposed when illegal-mining operations are disrupted. The focus remains overwhelmingly on the individuals physically underground.

If you don't disrupt the supply network, you don't disrupt the organised crime operation.

Then there is the other direction, and perhaps the more important one, because this is where the underlying financial incentive lies. Once the miners have extracted the ore and refined it into gold, who buys it?

Who pays them? Who takes possession of the gold? How are those payments made? Is money being transferred elsewhere, including to families in the miners' countries of origin? Who are the people actually providing the financial reward that makes the entire operation worthwhile?

And once the gold has been bought, where does it go? At some point, presumably, illegally mined gold must either be introduced into a legitimate market or moved through an illicit one. If it is being regularised, how is that happening? Who is facilitating it? If it is instead being smuggled elsewhere, where is it going, and through which networks?

Neither possibility suggests a handful of desperate people operating independently in abandoned mine shafts. It suggests networks capable of purchasing unregistered gold, moving significant amounts of money and transporting a valuable commodity. It suggests suppliers, buyers, financiers, intermediaries and logistical networks.

These are fundamental questions about the organised crime surrounding illegal mining, yet they rarely seem to occupy the centre of the public conversation.

And this raises another important question: what does simply throwing more boots on the ground - more patrolling police officers, or the SANDF - actually do to address the investigative capacity within the SAPS to properly investigate organised crime?

Identifying and dismantling organised crime requires a far more sophisticated policing approach. It may require the infiltration of criminal networks. It requires informants within those networks. It requires investigators capable of following financial and logistical trails beyond the people encountered underground. And it requires an integrated approach between the SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority, where investigators and prosecutors work together to build cases using the powerful legislation already available to them, including the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, or POCA.

Those are the kinds of tools that need to be used to identify and dismantle organised crime networks. Instead, the focus continues to fall on the superficial and most visible aspect of the problem: the men underground.

Instead, when we have an incident in which it is alleged that members of one group of illegal miners murdered people associated with a rival group, the focus once again settles on the lowest foot soldiers in the network. It becomes a localised dispute between rival groups of zama zamas.

But the shooting itself may be only one manifestation of a much larger criminal economy. We look for the people who pulled the triggers. We look for the people underground. We deploy more police officers, or soldiers, to the affected area. Meanwhile, the people supplying the criminal economy and the people buying its product remain largely absent from the conversation.

And until those parts of the network are brought front and centre, we will continue having the wrong discussion - in government, in the media and in the broader public discourse.

That also means we cannot properly hold the authorities accountable for dismantling these networks. Because fundamentally, this is not an illegal-mining problem that can be understood simply as people mining without permits. It is an organised crime problem, and the state does not have the capacity nor expertise to adequately respond to it.

[News24 🇿🇦 @News24]

Strip club where top cop Sibiya was arrested serves as ‘Sandton police HQ’
https://t.co/JdTtaZniGP

[News24 🇿🇦 @News24]

Two years and counting: NPA yet to decide on prosecuting Ntshavheni’s R2.5m corruption case

https://t.co/2C79AI9YCh

[karabo mpho @karabompho3000]

@SenJohnKennedy Fish is healthy john

[Lerato Pillay 🇿🇦💎🇿🇦 @LeratoPillayZA]

ANC

[karabo mpho @karabompho3000]

@HeidiGiokos Saps is so defunded at this time they haven't found the motives of all those women

[karabo mpho @karabompho3000]

@Patriot_S_A Link?

[Special One 🇿🇦 @Nhleiks5]

"We must start imagining freedom without the ANC" Adv Muzi Sikhakhane SC. 🤔

[Geordin Hill-Lewis @geordinhl]

In Cape Town we spend R60m a year replacing vandalised public infrastructure. We will never surrender to urban decay and destruction of public property.

These metal thieves were arrested by City Law Enforcement within minutes. And the robot was replaced within 24 hours.

[karabo mpho @karabompho3000]

@GiftKho88498193 @destiny_ndlovu That's my analysis a s well those witnesses must be heavily protected cos they will bring him down with a most people

[Ziyanda N @ZiyandaNgcobo]

BREAKING : Suspended deputy national commissioner Shadrack Sibiya is in the dock. The state and defence are not opposed to the bail application being broadcast with restrictions but that won’t proceed today because of time constraints. The bail hearing will now be heard on the 29th of September. Sibiya will be detained at Kgosi Mampuru prison. No bail granted.

[P Gambu @PelelaniGambu]

@HeidiGiokos @SABCNews Yoooh

[Anastasi Mokgobu @AnastasiMokgobu]

As members of the media are trying to get permission to go inside the court, the security officer has manhandled @pule_jones who was trying to plead for the media to be allowed in as the 59-year-old SAPS Lieutenant-General is about to appear before the Magistrate.

[karabo mpho @karabompho3000]

@AnastasiMokgobu @JusstAlpha @pule_jones The magistrate presiding over the case is corrupt 🤞

[eNCA @eNCA]

'Wherever we govern, jobs are created in big numbers'. These were the words of DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis as he addressed communities in Nelson Mandela Bay.
https://t.co/KmQV37UonU

[Corné_Mulder @MulderCorn]

#FikileToBeProsecuted

[karabo mpho @karabompho3000]

@barrybateman Thank @afriforum please make it a reality to prosecute Mbalula @kalliekriel

[Barry Bateman @barrybateman]

AfriForum to announce prosecution of senior ANC leader

Advocate Gerrie Nel, Head of AfriForum’s Private Prosecution Unit, along with Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, will make an urgent announcement regarding the prosecution of a senior ANC leader during a media conference this afternoon.

Members of the media are hereby invited to attend the conference.

Date: Monday 21 September 2026
Time: 15:00
Venue: AfriForumTV studio, AfriForum Head Office, 58 Union Ave, Kloofsig, Centurion

[M🇿🇦☦️ @M24onRSA]

The number of small South African businesses that struggle to get funding and yet here we are giving away multi-million rand tenders to foreigners. Ngiy'zonda ngehliziyo yam' yonke i-ANC🚮