South African authorities raided several shacks in the Matoleville area west of Johannesburg and seized a large cache of commercial explosives, gold concentrate, and gold processing equipment.
Several foreigners were arrested in that raid and charged with illegal mining.
The police said they nabbed buckets of gold undergoing the initial stages of processing.
“Inside the shacks we found the buckets of gold concentrate that is ready for the James tables, to be washed to go to the third phase, the last phase, to the gold concentrate. We found a lot of explosive tubes. That the illegal miners use that to go down in the mine shafts to use it underground,” Andre Laing, Operations Commander at the Roodepoort Police Station said.
The alleged illegal miners who were arrested in the operation are all from neighbouring countries.
“We have uncovered a few, mainly male people who are mainly from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, who don’t have the documents,” Heidi Malisa, Assistant Director Home Affairs Inspectorate Services said.
The miners had illegally tapped into water and electricity networks in the area to process the gold.
Municipal authorities however managed to disconnect and plug those illegal connections.
In its 2016 report‚ the Chamber of Mines noted that the rise in illegal mining could be attributed to a combination of factors‚ including a difficult socio-economic climate and limited resources at the disposal of law enforcement agencies‚ such as police‚ immigration‚ border control and prosecuting authorities.
