Survival: Artisanal gold miners process slim pickings in Matholesville, on the West Rand, which relies on the economy that has developed around illegal mining. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
A police vehicle swoops down a quiet street in West Village, Krugersdorp, in Gauteng, slowing as it passes a group of residents.
“Did you get the licence plate?” asks Andre Shannon, the vice-chair of the West Village Community Forum, as he watches it move off.
Last week, Shannon says, locals recorded what they allege was a police officer taking a bribe. Now, they want to determine if this same police vehicle was involved.
Less than half a kilometre away is a horrific crime scene, the barren North Sands mine dump where eight women were gang-raped and robbed at gunpoint, allegedly by illegal artisanal miners, late last month.
For years, the settlement has been a hotspot of artisanal gold mining
in the abandoned, derelict mines that encircle its roughly 500 households.
Shannon attributes the crime wave in West Village in the past seven years to criminals involved in illegal artisanal mining.
“The unfortunate part is that this is not something that happened now,” he says, of the gang rape.
“We’ve been reporting this for years — rapes and murders from these zama zama gangs. … The police don’t listen. We knew this was going to happen because it’s happening all the time here … Now, that it’s people from somewhere else, it’s highlighted. Kagiso is sitting with the problem, Randfontein is sitting with the problem, Bekkersdal is sitting with the problem, even Magalies is sitting with the problem.”
In a show of force in the past week, a police crackdown has seen hundreds of artisanal miners arrested in the area, while West Rand residents have taken to the streets to hunt them down. Police Minister Bheki Cele has promised the deployment of special police units to clamp down on illegal artisanal mining.
Shannon says the residents of West Village have a self-imposed curfew. “At 6pm, you lock yourself in and don’t go outside at night … After 8pm, the police are not coming and there’s no use calling them … In the last three weeks, one lady was shot through the jaw and another lady is lying in Leratong Hospital after she was shot in the chest twice. These are not exceptions.”
There is widespread distrust of the police in the area.
“If you listened to what was said at the crime imbizos on the weekend, everybody is complaining about police corruption. Over here, they take bribes openly from the zama zamas, it’s not even a secret,” Shannon says.
“Everybody has lost faith in the police … In the same instance, there might be good police officers but I think they’re also afraid of what might happen to them.”
According to a News24 report, Cele told residents at one imbizo: “It is painful when people complain about corrupt police officers. Most are doing their job. Unfortunately, a few are tarnishing the image of the entire police service. Police officers need to know they are the face of the nation.”
Steven Malaka*, another resident of West Village, also says he has sent video evidence of alleged police corruption to local police. “They ask you, ‘Who are those police? If you don’t know them there’s nothing we can do’. They’ve got fleet numbers, registration numbers, they would know exactly who is using that car, but nothing happens.”
On Thursday, the day after the last police raid in West Village, “we saw them taking brown envelopes”, Malaka claimed. “Some officers are working day and night, having sleepless nights while other guys are enjoying waking up and going to collect extra cash. I don’t know if you call it a street allowance or a risk allowance.”
About 20km away, at Durban Deep in Roodepoort, another artisanal mining hotspot, residents have long lived in fear of violence and lawlessness. “What we’re seeing from the police now is reactive and it’s all for show,” said one resident who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“And it’s as if only foreigners commit crime in South Africa.”
The resident notes that many of the artisanal miners are just trying to eke out a living. “They are not all rapists and thieves. They’re people with families, who live in desperate poverty. Many are forced into these gangs to be able to mine underground.”
Malaka agrees. “The zamas that are working for gold here are not bothering anybody. You can walk here, they won’t even see a woman or a man, they don’t care about you — they are the ones who want to work and I have no problem with them.”
On patrol: Police drive through West Village on the outskirts of Krugersdorp during a clampdown on artisanal mining. Police have been accused of being in cahoots with criminal mining syndicates. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
Durban Deep’s residents also lock themselves in their homes at sunset. The resident said: “People are frightened and the reason is because they can’t rely on the police. They’re frightened their names will be given out if they speak to the police.”
The resident claims the police are complicit. “We see them taking money openly. The fact is that the police are making money out of this. It’s not one police station, it’s several that come here to get their money.
“It’s a daily cash cow for them and everybody knows about it. I’ve personally seen it not once, but 100 times. And the one time I did report it, I got harassed mercilessly … Say they’re going to organise a raid on the zamas, all the cops do is phone their contacts and those guys scatter and they’re gone. The cops who are doing it, their lifestyles are going to be affected if there are no zamas zamas … so, why would they root it out?” the resident asked.
“If you are the station commander or provincial commissioner and you’ve got horrific crime stats of murder and rapes concentrated in one area … if you’ve got your vehicles going to the same area every day, without making an arrest, don’t you check up and see where your staff is going? We’re talking about a huge failure at the local level.”
A cold wind blows through Gloria Masebe’s* neat yard in West Village as she watches the overgrown veld where criminal gangs allegedly lurk. “They break in houses, they rape, they kill. We live in fear here. The police don’t care. They come and collect money from the zamas, or the gold dust or they sell bullets to them — the same bullets which are killing me.
“At night if something happens, you phone them and they can’t come — either there is no transport or they say, ‘We told you to move out of there.’ This is my house. Where am I going to go? You can’t win unless the police do something but we don’t have police. You rather don’t go to the station and complain … or the next thing you’re going to hear these gangs kicking your door down.”
Brigadier Brenda Muridili, the Gauteng spokesperson for the South African Police Service (SAPS), says allegations of police complicity are common.
“We always say that when we say people must report, you don’t have to go to Randfontein police station and report the police that are corrupt in Randfontein police station. Obviously, you are not going to get assistance … There are many platforms that the community can report if they don’t trust the SAPS.
“For as long as they keep saying the ‘police in Bekkersdal are corrupt’, and you don’t say Brigadier Muridili took money from so and so … we cannot deal with a blanket allegation … We know that not all police officers are angels. We have hard-working members, hence you see the successes we’ve achieved on the West Rand,” she says, adding that rogue police officers are arrested by police officers.
Lieutenant Colonel Philani Nkwalase, spokesperson for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks), weighed in: “Those are very serious allegations and those allegations are issues that should be investigated by us. By all means, somebody must come forward to us and make those allegations to us and be prepared to give us a sworn statement, and we will act accordingly.
“I have not come across such allegations, I’m not saying it’s not plausible, it may very well be. The Hawks are willing and able to clean the police and deal with corrupt cops like we have always done. Those that make their allegations must call us and be prepared to give statements, if they want to remain anonymous that can also be arranged, [but] there must be solid evidence.”
A 2019 policy brief by Enhancing Africa’s Response to Transnational Organised Crime (Enact) noted how the phenomenon of illegal artisanal mining is “inextricably linked with the endemic corruption” that permeates the public and private sectors.
“The complicity of local police in illegal mining also complicates efforts to contain the activities of the miners. Zama zamas complain that police regularly shake them down for bribes in return for not arresting them, or confiscate their gold and sell it directly to the syndicates,” the report noted.
“One gun retrieved during an underground firefight was registered to the South African Police Service, suggesting police collusion with the most violent strata of the syndicates. Senior police officials acknowledge such complicity but have yet to take concrete action to stop the practice.”
*Not their real names.
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