Regulatory failure, not criminality, lies at the heart of SAâs mining crisis

This story has significance for readers across Africa and beyond.

Fourteen miners were recently victims of a tragic incident in an improperly closed mine in Nkaneng, near Marikana, in North West. While the current narrative is that this is a matter of illegal mining activity, the real issue is the stateâs sustained failure to regulate mine closure and hold the mining industry accountable.

With more than 6,000 abandoned and derelict mines across South Africa, the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR) escapes accountability in a stark display of regulatory failure. The department operates in a vacuum, evading responsibility for its failure to enforce proper mine closures.

The minister of mineral and petroleum resources, Gwede Mantashe, has said that the government has âno obligation to rehabilitate anythingâ, regarding disused or ownerless mines. This position, articulated before the South African Human Rights Commission, demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the stateâs constitutional obligations and its duties under international human rights law.

When transnational corporations and mining companies commit these harms, the impacts are far-reaching. They expose the intersection of private-sector conduct and state abdication, revealing an inadequate legislative framework that allows corporate flight without properly closing and rehabilitating the mines they have worked for years on end.

Worse still, mining companies fail to account to the host communities they abandon â leaving them impoverished, without recourse and lacking alternative livelihoods. Furthermore, an industry cannot genuinely be branded âillegalâ when adequate laws to govern it do not exist in the first place. What we are seeing is an unregulated sector that the state, until now, has simply lacked the political will to govern properly.

Over the years, Lawyers for Human Rights, along with others, has tracked the human toll of improper mine closure through the release of various reports. One such report was âBlyvooruitzicht Mine Village: the human toll of state and corporate abdication of responsibility in South Africaâ, published in 2017, which examined the impacts of sudden liquidation of a major mining operation on a mining community and the devastation that caused.

Another was âThe Impact and Assessment of Improper Mine Closures in South Africa: Community Perspectives on Human Rightsâ, published in 2022, which focused on the legacy of mining projects and their effects on community development, once mining corporations have departed without closing and rehabilitating the mines.

A further research report was published in 2024, âUnpacking the state of improper mine closures in the Southern African Development Communityâ, highlighting the negligence of mining companies towards both the environment and the surrounding communities across the SADC region.

Nevertheless, the state continues to fail to regulate the sector at every turn.

More recently, the devastating impact of improper mine closure was felt in the Stilfontein tragedy, where Operation Vala Umgodi led to the deaths of 87 people at the Buffelsfontein Mine in Klerksdorp, North West. During Operation Vala Umgodi, the South African Police Service deployed a controversial tactic to curb unregulated mining: blockading mine shafts to starve the miners inside.

A matter of survival

In this context, artisanal mining is not simply a matter of individual criminality; it is a symptom of a wider regulatory failure, in which mines are abandoned, unsecured and unrehabilitated. People are driven into dangerous informal mining activities to survive. The stateâs failure to regulate mine closure and hold mining companies accountable creates the very conditions in which artisanal mining occurs.

Our focus should not be on criminalising artisanal miners â a narrative that merely penalises impoverished, exploited people. Instead, the real criminality lies with mining companies that strip the land and abandon it without rehabilitation. The true offence resides in the silence of the DMPR, which permits these corporations to evade their statutory duties and walk away without proper regulation.

The state constructs a narrative of pure criminality to mask what is, in reality, a completely unmanaged and neglected sector. By focusing solely on policing, authorities ignore the technical and legal vacuum they created. What we have is an informal sector which, until now, the state has been entirely unwilling to constructively regulate.

We ask government authorities to do the following in relation to mine closure and environmental management issues:

Expedite the development and consolidation of legislation;

Enhance capacity to effectively address environmental management issues, including those related to mine closure;

Establish a robust framework for financial assurances to support mine closure activities;

Create a safe space for civil society organisations to engage with authorities on key issues affecting local communities;

Hold mining companies accountable for proper rehabilitation of all derelict and ownerless mines; and

Establish a comprehensive framework for the regulation of artisanal and small-scale mining that prioritises safety, human dignity and sustainable livelihoods.

The state must act before more lives are lost. Corporate profits must never be placed before communitiesâ safety. DM

Reporting originally appeared via Daily Maverick. Read the full source for additional context.