President Cyril Ramaphosa. Photo: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty Images
ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa said the scourge of illegal mining and influx of illegal immigrants was negatively impacting the country.
Ramaphosa was speaking at the ANC Manifesto 2019 review at Dobsonville Stadium, Soweto on Sunday.
The rally was aimed at giving a report back to its supporters on the progress the party has made in implementing its commitments post 2019.
He said the government was in the process of implementing programmes that will address the problem.
These programmes will see minister of police Bheki Cele and minister of home affairs Arron Motsoaledi’s departments working together to address the scourge.
According to the department of mineral resources and energy (DMRE), the economy lost about R49 billion in 2019 to illegal mining. It added that mining companies spend over R2 billion on security just to prevent these illicit activities.
Ramaphosa added that the ANC was currently strengthening policies that help the affected ministries to effectively do their jobs.
“We will work together with South African Police Services to address zama zama’s in our towns and address criminality. Foreign national programmes have been initiated and illegal foreigners are being arrested. Better know that from now on, if you are not documented, you will be arrested,” he said.
Although mining is at the backbone of South Africa’s economy, illegal mining activities have threatened and displaced community members from their homes.
Communities in and around West of Johannesburg have protested against illegal miners, fearing for their lives as turf wars increase.
Communities in the affected areas say that illegal miners have been allowed to operate freely, taking over abandoned mine shafts.
The department of minerals resources and energy has often come under fire from environmental groups for failing to enforce laws and hold mining companies accountable to ensure that the proper closure and rehabilitation of mines are carried out.
Last month, DMRE’s chief director Andries Moatshe told parliament that the department still had 518 mine shafts that are yet to be closed in Gauteng.
Ramaphosa said the party was working with the DMRE in addressing policy loopholes that have caused an increase in illegal mining.
“We are acting to address the proliferation of illegal mining in derelict and ownerless mines, and fast-tracking programmes to seal such shafts. Law enforcement continues to deal with the criminal aspects of this phenomenon,” he said.
Ramaphosa added that he had instructed ministers to examine how laws could be changed to allow the government to act faster without violating people’s rights.
“The restrictions on development placed on us as the government are detrimental to development and progress. Red tape and restrictions impede us from doing right by our people. I have directed ministers and various people to get us to start looking at the unnecessary laws that would, if not changed, violate people’s rights,” the party leader said.
Addressing scores of ANC members, Youth League President Collen Malatji added that police visibility in the affected towns was important to ensure that illegal foreigners and illegal miners were removed from illegally occupied buildings.
“We cannot allow illegal foreigners to take over our towns. Police and defence ministers must go and clean out all those buildings,” he said.
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi said the ANC should place its focus in ending load-shedding which has seen an increase in criminality in the province and many law enforcement deaths.
Lesufi warned that if the governing party is not able to address load-shedding, it risked losing the province to opposition parties.
“We are committing ourselves and the government that I have the honour to lead, that all those communities that have transformers that are broken, stolen, we are going to those communities to install new transformers to ensure they are connected,” Lesufi said.
In his speech, Ramaphosa said despite the power shortages, the party’s intervention was beginning to bear fruits.
“We have now improved the performance of the ESKOM units from a historic low of 48% Energy Availability Factor (EAF) to an average of 60%. This has resulted in the reduction of the intensity of load shedding,” he said.
On Saturday, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said that South Africans should expect higher stages of load-shedding during the summer season.
He added that the current intensity of load-shedding experienced in the country is primarily on the back of Eskom ramping up on planned outages.
“More and possibly higher stages of load-shedding should be expected as Eskom takes more units offline for maintenance,” he said.
On Sunday Eskom ramped up its load shedding schedule to stage five.
“We have taken a view that when the generating unit needs to be taken out, we are going to take them out. Of course, we’ll do a computation of what that means in relation to the intensity of load-shedding.
This is despite Eskom board chairperson Mpho Makwana announcing last month that Eskom anticipates a festive season without load-shedding.
Makwana said they were banking on the return of units at Kusile Power Station to ensure that the utility has enough capacity to accommodate the festive season.
Ramokgopa added that there has been a decrease in units tripping on their own due to maintenance.
“We are ramping up planned maintenance so that when these units come back, they come back healthy and they are able to give us a significant amount of hours and also perform at their designed capacity.
“As a result of that action we are beginning to see that the units tripping on their own is beginning to decrease and that is to allow us to address the available capacity and we should be able to meet the peak focus.
“We will make sure that we do not go to alarming stages of load-shedding. We are doing things right, to avert the problem historically that has landed us to where we are at today,” the minister said.