The interception of food supplies headed for illegal mining activities at various shafts around Welkom in the Free State has forced some illegal miners to the surface in a bid to escape starvation underground.
The task team, which was operationalized in December, has to date arrested about 2,800 zama-zamas. A crackdown on illicit mining operations is currently on its fourth phase of investigations, revealing a highly organized syndicate, that brings foreign nationals to the abandoned shafts of the gold fields in Welkom to extract remaining gold deposits underground.
“The operation started in December 2023, on the 14th, up until now it is happening. We are now in phase four of the operation. And this is a national intervention that is focusing on illicit mining that is happening around the country and Free State is one of those provinces,” says Colonel Nontando Ndzotyana, Free State Commander: Operation Vala Umgodi.
“We have intercepted vehicles, intercepted food supplies, and the medicines that keep them going underground. When we are talking food supply, we are talking from dried fruits, maize meal-pap, instant-pap-morvite, canned food, your beans, your pilchards and some syrup that they are using that is believed to keep them moving or having more energy and peanut butter,” says Ndzotyana.