SA’s gold industry is reeling under an increased number of attacks by heavily armed gunmen at their processing plants, looking for easy and lucrative access to the metal that is selling for more than R700,000/kg.
The industry has for years struggled with illegal miners, known as zama-zamas, bribing or coercing their way into their underground operations, hacking out gold-bearing reef, stealing copper cables and engaging in pitched gun battles with each other and security officers.
An EU-funded study released in June 2019 by the Institute for Security Studies, in collaboration with Interpol and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime, estimated illegal gold flows from SA are worth about R14bn a year, the largest in Africa.
It’s a dystopian mess. It’s like something out of a Mad Max movie, apocalyptic. There are thousands of people involved, and there is absolutely zero policing. It’s completely out of control.
— Gold mine senior executive
There are about 30,000 zama-zamas in SA, made up of locals and citizens of neighbouring countries, where gold mines have traditionally recruited labour, such as Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
The narrative over the past year has taken on a new and more sinister tone, with gangs armed with AK-47s and other automatic rifles to attack plants to steal concentrate or smelted gold, industry figures said.
Many senior figures in SA’s leading gold companies either declined to comment or spoke on condition of anonymity,
but the message was very clear: this has become a "massive problem" and one that is gaining momentum.
The most recent attack was on DRDGold on October 21, when a gang of about 16 to 20 men armed with automatic rifles took 11 company employees hostage at the Ergo operation near Brakpan, 50km east of Johannesburg, to gain access to the gold plant.
In a late-night gun battle, DRDGold chief security officer Bart Coetzee was shot dead, and the gang made off with 17kg of gold in concentrate worth about R12m.
Police, acting on a tip-off, raided a house last Tuesday, finding half the gold. Cash, firearms and expensive cars were found at the house in a security estate, but the occupants had fled.
"The Minerals Council SA is aware of the high level of criminal activity reported by its members in the gold sector, particularly instances of violent crime as evidenced by the DRDGold incident," said spokesperson Charmane Russell.
"The council continues to engage with the government
on this matter as well as with policing structures."
Sibanye-Stillwater, which has three large underground mines in Gauteng and the Free State, was raided over the past year by a gang that was seen off by security after a fierce gun battle, said company spokesperson James Wellsted.
"We have had more than one of these type of events in the past year or so," he said. "These are not rare at all. They’re becoming more and more common."
Gold One, which is Chinese owned and a 20% shareholder in Sibanye, was attacked by a gang of 20 in May. A wall of the smelter house was destroyed with mine equipment and gold worth R25m stolen.
"These guys are highly organised, and it’s relatively easy to get high-grade gold-bearing material compared to digging out little bits in dangerous underground conditions for months on end.
"They can make millions in a single hit. They are very well armed and they’re extremely brazen," Wellsted said.
"Mine security forces can’t arm themselves the same way these gangs are armed, and so they can’t match their firepower. Just imagine if a mining company’s security officers killed a whole lot of people on the premises. It would be a catastrophe," he said.
A senior executive at another gold company said that there had been about a dozen such attacks so far in 2019, and the industry was demanding a more focused response from the police, with specialist reaction teams deployed by helicopters to intervene when these raids happened.
The executive said the level of organisation and military-style tactics deployed in these attacks suggested that the gold-theft syndicates had turned to members of cash-in-transit gangs to assist in attacking relatively vulnerable gold plants.
"We can turn our operations and our gold plants into Fort Knox, but as soon as people are kidnapped and hijacked even the strongest gate will be unlocked if an employee’s life is in danger," said the executive.
However, the tide was turning as companies stepped up security, the executive warned.
"These guys come in with guns blazing and expect to walk back out, but soon they’ll be leaving head-first.
‘Terrorism’
"We are not going to tolerate this kind of terrorism," he said. Another executive said that it was also likely that former soldiers from Lesotho, hired by zama-zamas at defunct mines and other illegal workings to protect their turf, could be involved in these attacks.
"If you go out to the West Rand, on the very edge of Joburg, you’ll be amazed.
"It’s a dystopian mess. It’s like something out of a Mad Max movie, apocalyptic. There are thousands of people involved, and there is absolutely zero policing. It’s completely out of control," said the executive.
A third executive said the attacks on gold plants were part of a broader network of crime and corruption that involved the police. It also included drugs, tobacco, rhino horn, cash-in-transit robberies and other activities broader than just the zama-zamas.
"The gold price is a major attraction. So many companies have stopped illegal access to their underground areas that they’re now going for these softer targets.
"We’re all stepping up security, but there’s only so much you can do. It needs a much more concerted effort on behalf of the police," the third executive said.
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