More than 40 illegal miners arrested in separate incidents in the North West
JOHANNESBURG - More than 40 zama zamas have been arrested in separate incidents in the North West this week, as police in the province continue with Operation Vala Umgodi to clamp down on illegal mining.
The group, aged between 18 and 47, face various charges, including the Contravention of the Immigration Act.
North West police spokesperson Adele Myburgh said the latest arrests were made in Sun City, Mogwase and Tlhabane.
'All mentioned suspects will appear in the Bafokeng and Mankwe Magistrates' Courts, respectively. The suspects are from different countries, including Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Nigeria and Lesotho.'
The North West is among seven provinces impacted by illegal mining, with a massive operation leading to the arrest of hundreds of illegal miners in Stilfontein earlier this year.
Myburgh said police are worried about the involvement of foreign nationals in the commission of crime, threatening the country's national security.
'The involvement of foreign nationals in the commission of crime, whether aided or abetted by South Africans, poses a serious threat to national security and as such requires a collaborative effort by civil society and various government's security and social departments such as the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), Border Management Authority, Customs/ South African Revenue Services (SARS), Home Affairs Immigration, Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE), Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (DPCI) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).'
ALSO READ: Mantashe admits he has no sympathy for illegal miners who get trapped underground
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Citizen
4 hours ago
- The Citizen
Dirty cops dismissed after kidnapping and extortion arrests
Two SAPS members have been dismissed following their arrest for kidnapping and extortion in a case that has sent shockwaves through Gauteng. Constables Thabiso Pule Paul Molefe (32) and Paseka Matena (33), both members of the SAPS Highway Patrol Unit, were arrested by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) earlier this year in connection with a case opened in Springs. The two officers were found guilty following internal disciplinary hearings conducted under the SAPS Discipline Regulations of 2016. Both have been sanctioned with dismissal, pending final confirmation by the Provincial Commissioner. Public reaction to the arrests and dismissals has been swift. Ian Cameron, DA Member of Parliament and well-known policing accountability advocate, took to social media to praise the outcome. 'SOME GOOD NEWS: DIRTY COPS OUT,' he wrote, highlighting this as a meaningful example of consequence management in the SAPS. 'The public demands accountability, and this is a step in the right direction. We need a police service that earns the trust of law-abiding South Africans.' Molefe, who is reportedly the son of a former high-ranking police official, and his co-accused Matena, were allegedly involved in a scheme where they kidnapped victims and extorted money from them under the guise of official police operations. Their arrest and dismissal are being hailed as a success for IPID and an important signal that misconduct within SAPS will not be tolerated. The case also underscores growing calls for transparency and reform in the police service. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
eNCA
5 hours ago
- eNCA
Should parents take a fall for their children's crimes?
JOHANNESBURG - A 12-year-old child in Brakpan, on the East Rand is alleged to have stolen his parent's car, ran a stop sign, and killed a 14-year-old pedestrian, before crashing into a house wall. The child has since been taken into custody, accompanied by his guardian. In South Africa, children can be held criminally responsible for their actions. According to the Child Justice Act, children aged 12 and older are considered to have the capacity to commit a crime and may face prosecution. South African common law further states that parents are generally not held liable for crimes committed by their children, unless it can be proven that the parents used the child as a tool to commit the crime. Typically, children who commit crimes are sent to juvenile detention facilities focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment. This tragic incident has sparked public debate: Who should be held accountable, the parent or the child? South Africans have mixed reactions to this. Some believe children must take responsibility for their own actions, especially if they are of prosecutable age. Others argue that parents should bear responsibility. @JacksShongwe says, 'Accountability should be shared. Minors must take age-appropriate responsibility for their actions, but parents also play a crucial role, as their guidance, supervision, and environment significantly influence a child's behaviour. Each case should be assessed individually'. @TashyRR says, 'This should be based on the crime & circumstances involved but if they are teens then majority of crimes can be understood by the teen him/herself in which case I'd say juvenile court can try them out as individuals with their parents/guardians as onlookers'. @NoozBebe_ says, 'This needs to be on a case by case basis. There are many homes where the parents work far from home and are never there to guide their children on weekdays. These kids sometimes fall into the hands of wayward adults who teach them and employ them to do their dirty work. In each case, the kids will lead you to the bad adult. There's always a bad adult behind every kid's crime'.
Eyewitness News
5 hours ago
- Eyewitness News
Mkhwanazi's war on criminals in KZN may win public approval but at what cost to our constitutional democracy?
'Main suspect in Olorato Mongale's murder dies in shootout with cops'. These were the headlines that South Africans woke up to on the morning of 30th May 2025. Just over a week earlier, Mongale had been killed after being picked up for a date by a man she knew as 'John'. Her body was dumped on a street in Lombardy near Alexandra in the Gauteng Province. Mongale's murder shook South Africa. Here was a young woman, a postgraduate student at Wits University, whose only crime on the day was to go out on a date with a man she was trying to get to know, and within two hours of being picked up outside her complex, she was fighting for her life – a fight that she lost, but whose viciousness would be evidenced in the state of her deceased body. Mongale fought until her fingernails snapped off. One can only imagine the horror that she went through in the final moments of her life in the hands of Philangenkosi Makhanya and Bongani Mthinkhulu - men who, just a few weeks prior, were granted bail after a court appearance following their arrest in Brakpan, Gauteng, for kidnapping and robbing a woman. For many South Africans, the killing of Makhanya, the main suspect in Mongale's murder, was justice. He was fatally shot by KwaZulu Natal (KZN) police while hiding out at a residential complex in eManzimtoti (formerly Amanzimtoti), a coastal town just south of eThekwini (Durban). According to KZN police, following extensive investigation, they were alerted to the hiding place of the murderer, and when police announced their arrival, he shot at them. Police returned fire and he was fatally wounded. Speaking at the scene of the shooting, the provincial commissioner of the South African Police Service (SAPS) in KZN, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, said the suspect was found with tens of identity documents and 20 cellphones in his possession. These are now subject of an investigation and no doubt, belong to women who suffered robberies and possibly worse, in the man's hands. At face value, Makhanya's killing was a just response to Mongale's brutal and senseless murder. But scratch beneath the surface, and a clear pattern begins to emerge. Over the past few months, news of criminals dying in shootouts with KZN police have dominated the headlines. Not a week passes by that we do not read about suspects dying in violent confrontations with the police. Curiously, the story is almost exactly the same – a suspect fires at police as soon as they announce their arrival, and they return fire. The suspect dies in a hail of police bullets and more often than not, no police officer is wounded or killed. Once or twice may be understandable. But the rate at which this is happening in KZN begs the question of whether or not we are witnessing extrajudicial killings in a province that has one of the highest rates of crime in South Africa. Extrajudicial killings, or extrajudicial executions, happen when someone in an official position deliberately kills a person without any legal process. In most parts of the world, particularly in conflict zones such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Syria, Sudan, across Latin America, etc, such killings are usually carried out by militias, death squads or other non-state actors. In these regions, extrajudicial killings often target political opponents, activists, or marginalised groups. This is what makes the case of KZN unique – that those killed are not political opponents or activists, but criminals, usually the hardened who have caused a reign of terror in communities. This is why, unlike in the mentioned conflict zones where the killings are viewed as unjust and a violation of human rights, in South Africa, they are celebrated by millions of people. The reality of the situation is that crime has torn our country asunder. South Africa is one of the most violent places on earth and is consistently ranked among the most dangerous countries in the world for crime, frequently appearing in the top 5 or 10 on various lists. Gender-based violence (GBV) is especially high in the country. Consider the recently tabled crime statistics for the fourth quarter of the 2024/2025 financial year, covering the period from 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025. During this quarter, sexual offences, including rape and contact sexual offences, along with commercial crime, have shown increases. There were 13 452 sexual offenses, with 10 688 of these being rapes. This translates to 116 rapes per day. And these are only reported cases. Many cases of sexual violence, including rape, go unreported owing to a myriad of factors. To understand how horrific these numbers are, consider that, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 10 000 cases of rape and sexual violence were reported to protection actors in war-torn eastern DRC in the same period. This means that more women are being raped in 'stable' democratic South Africa than they are in a conflict zone where rape is used as a weapon of war. In recent years, South Africa has introduced several important legal changes aimed at strengthening protections for victims and holding perpetrators accountable. Despite numerous legislative protections, women are still being subjected to unimaginable violence while perpetrators are rarely apprehended. As evidenced with Mongale's killers, perpetrators very often get away with crimes against women by either being granted bail with lenient conditions, if any, or not being prosecuted. In the few instances where prosecution does occur, especially for sexual crimes, conviction rates are extremely low and mandatory sentences are rarely ever given. A 2022 study by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) found that only around 14% of perpetrators of rape are convicted. Other data suggests even lower conviction rates for sexual offenses, with only 5% of adult rape cases and 9%bof child rape cases resulting in convictions. Low conviction rates are just as low for other categories of crime, with the conviction rate for murder sitting at around 6-12%. Regardless of what politicians are saying, South African police are losing the war on crime. The killings committed by police in KZN occur under such conditions – conditions of frustration by a police force that does its best to investigate crimes, only for the weak and ineffective National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to bungle cases. These killings are happening in a state of desperation by communities who must endure the reign of terror that criminals are subjecting residents to. Without an effective strategy to combat the rampant crime that has come to define the face of democratic South Africa, we are left at the mercy of criminals. This is why, when KZN police shoot-to-kill, no-one sheds a tear and instead, hail Lieutenant-General Mkhwanazi and his men as heroes. I will admit that for a minute, I too celebrated the killing of Mongale's murderer. I am a woman and like other South African women, I know too well the horrors of violence and live in a state of debilitating fear and anxiety induced by crime in our country. But in celebrating such killings, we are setting parameters for something very dangerous. The South African state has a legal obligation to protect the right to life – a right that is enshrined in a Constitution that is the cornerstone of our democracy. Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law. Everyone has the right to freedom and security of the person, which includes the right to be free from all forms of violence from either public or private sources. These are inalienable human rights that we must uphold even in a state of anger and frustration. We may celebrate when it is criminals who are denied these rights, but the unintended consequence is that we are embalming a principle that could set parameters for genocide. Today, we clap because it is a murderer who was killed by the police. But tomorrow, emboldened and unaccountable, the same police will be killing innocent people, political opponents, activists and marginalised communities. By then, a precedent will have been cemented, and it will be almost impossible to reverse the tide. At that point, we will understand, too late, the argument of Professor Llyod Sachikonye whose masterpiece, When a State Turns on its Citizens: 60 Years of Institutionalised Violence in Zimbabwe, details how the precedent of violence set in the war of liberation has come to define the violence of the Zimbabwean state, where ZANU-PF rules with a margin of terror. Sachikonye contends that violence is not a light-switch that can be turned on and off at will – that once it is justified, once the precedent is set, it embalms a principle. A precedent, once established, becomes a lasting example that embodies the principle upon which it was based. Furthermore, such killings, while effective in the immediate, do not facilitate justice. They do not allow for meaningful closure for victims and their families, who are left with unanswered questions and are denied the right to confront their perpetrator, which provides immeasurable catharsis. These killings may, in fact, deny justice for some victims altogether, for once you murdered perpetrators, they can no longer reveal crucial details of unsolved crimes. We will never know how many other women Makhanya killed. We may never know how many undiscovered and unmarked graves of murdered women may exist. For some families, justice may never be done. Furthermore, dispensable foot-soldiers may be killed, to applause, while masterminds continue to recruit more willing foot-soldiers for the job. In this way, we could be dealing with symptoms rather than the cause. The solution to rampant crime in South Africa lies in addressing the systemic root causes of crime. It lies in strengthening public interest litigation and in arresting the rot in the NPA and the criminal justice system entirely. Anything less may offer temporary reprieve for communities and victims alike, but it does not cement the principle of justice and the forging of beloved community. Malaika, an award-winning and bestselling author, is a geographer and researcher at the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation. She is a PhD in Geography candidate at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.
