Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Illegal mining robs the south african fiscal of billions of rands every year. How do we stop this brazen crime? Are governments and mining companies doing enough to curb illegal mining? What impact does this have on communities and South Africa? Hi, I am Rochelle Buerta, and welcome to Deep InSights, brought to you by Mining Review Africa. In this episode, senior editor Gerard Peter chats to Stephen Mntete, director at leading multidisciplinary law firm Beach Feltman, about the effects that illegal mining has on South Africa. From the bottom all the way to the top is an end insight to this heinous crime that wreaks havoc on our daily living. Let's find out more.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us in deep insights today. Now, as you know, illegal mining is a problem that is really affecting our economy, our communities, and also the livelihoods of miners. But before get into the actual discussion about what can be done to curb the stem of illegal mining, let's start at the beginning. Can you give us some background on illegal mining in South Africa?
[00:01:24] Speaker C: Thank you, Gerard, and thank you for the invitation. It's quite a pleasure indeed to join you and the listeners of the MRA podcast.
[00:01:36] Speaker D: Just to give you a snapshot of.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: What I believe illegal mining in South Africa should be viewed contextually.
Illegal mining in South Africa should not be seen in isolation from what is happening globally.
[00:01:57] Speaker D: There is a global organized criminal behavior.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: That blunders the critical mineral resources of particularly developing countries like South Africa, from gold to diamonds to many other precious materials. So South Africa is just one of those little minions within the greater global illegal mining organized crime syndicate that is going so. But we'll talk about that as we go through the interview. Thank you.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Now, Stephen, you touched on that on the background, but let's look at illegal mining in South Africa particularly.
What is the current state of this crime? Because that's what it is. It's a crime. What is the current state of illegal mining in the country, and what has been the response from the public and private sectors with regards to this issue?
[00:03:09] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:03:10] Speaker C: The illegal mining activity is absolutely a crime. There's no doubt about that. It's defined by law. It's defined by various statutes. Even government ministers speak out about it on numerous platforms.
What illegal mining does is horrendous.
For example, the current estimate is that.
[00:03:39] Speaker D: About 20 billion rents is lost to.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: The fiscal of South Africa because of illegal mining. And if you look at the essential tool that is being used to regulate.
[00:03:56] Speaker D: Mining, ESG, ESG is rendered useless, if.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: I can put it that way, by.
[00:04:07] Speaker D: Activities of illegal mining, because activities of.
[00:04:12] Speaker C: Illegal mining pollute the air, they pollute the water.
They involve violations of human rights. There's issues of human trafficking of minor children into these illegal mining activities.
There's quite a lot of outrage from communities within which these illegal mining activities happen.
So it's quite a big issue in South Africa and I suppose globally, particularly in Africa, because that's where we are as South Africa. So the impact is phenomenal. It is damaging to the core of the economy of this country.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: But, Stephen, I just want to ask know, obviously, last year, the defense force stepped in.
The south african police services upped their game with regards to illegal mining. So that's from a more public and a more government point of view. But let's focus on the mining companies themselves. Are they doing enough to help curb illegal mining in this country?
[00:05:32] Speaker C: The mining industry has been doing quite a lot, Jared, from as early as 2013, 2015, even much more, when they were still called the Chamber of mines. An example would be something that happened, an initiative that they took to enable the south african government, because being the owners of these mines, the operators, they've got firsthand knowledge of what is happening in the industry. And without them, government can't do anything.
So in 2016, they developed a blueprint that resulted in South Africa and Russia engaging the United Nations, a unit called the Interregional Crime and Justice Research institute, Uni.
And this resulted in the development of a global strategy to deal with illegal mining phenomenon, not only in South Africa and Russia, but globally.
[00:06:46] Speaker D: And that strategy was presented to the.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Monitoring and planning department, or commission, within the south african presidency to ensure that there's monitoring. There's monitoring and implementation of everything that was recommended. So the placing of the police, the defense force, and the increased enforcement of laws and everything, all of these combined, they emanate from that.
And what has been happening in the past, before all of this, is that government has been adopting a fragmented approach to dealing with illegal mining.
You'd have, for example, Department of Home affairs, on its own, addressing the issue of illegal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and all of that. You have the Southeast police service in a silo, dealing with the issue of policing in areas where illegal mining is taking place. So various government departments were operating in silos. And when you operate in silos, you can talk to each other, but you don't talk in sync, and you don't act in sync with what you're doing. And the minute you do that, you don't deal with the problem.
Hence, even the human rights Commission produced a report that emphasized, among the many recommendations which they did, to say, government need to work with the industry and need to stop working in silos in a fragmented manner and deal with this issue as a united front. Because without that, it can never be solved, because we're dealing with a very sophisticated international crime syndicator. And most people underestimate the level with which the sophistication of illegal mining is done. It's not just a former miner from Lesotho or from Zimbabwe or from Mozambique coming here to plant our resources and take them in a suitcase back. No, this is much bigger than that. It is much bigger. It is much more sophisticated than that. You even see on television, when we look at it, the amount and the power of the weapons that they have, that only tells you there's a lot of money behind this operation. It is much more than most people think it is.
[00:09:40] Speaker D: So the industry worked with government as.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: Early as 2015, 2016 to make sure that even the United nations itself deals with this issue, because it doesn't only affect us, it affects many countries, particularly the developing world.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Thank you.
Stephen, I want to ask, you know, you've mentioned it's a sophisticated operation three times in the first few minutes of this interview. Would it make sense then to cut off the a as an analogy? Because if there's no more demand for this, and if you deal with these crime syndicates on a much more higher level, wouldn't that help to curb illegal mining?
[00:10:33] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: You cut off the head, you kill the operation. Hence, our tax authorities need to enhance their customs abilities to detect any export or even importation of illegal minerals from South Africa or into South Africa. Our police services need to make sure that they look at the value chain. I think that's where we're missing the point.
When you look at the value chain, you look at the ordinary miner who's mining and probably earning about 100 rents a day, you're going to lose the plot. But if you go right to the top and say, who is that billionaire sitting in some foreign country somewhere out there, buying our resources without holding proper channels, depriving South Africa of the tax revenues and all of that, and we use international agencies, Interpol, United nations, whatever we can use to go to deal with that individual and bring them to book, that will kill these operations, because without that, this problem is going to persist. It's going to persist.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Steven, I want to come back to the type of commodities with regards to illegal mining. Now, obviously, South Africa, it built primarily its economy on gold mines.
Is this still an active trend with regards to illegal mining and looking for gold, or you mentioned ESG and critical metals, et cetera. Are there other precious metals and resources that are now being illegally mined?
[00:12:32] Speaker C: Well, I like to say that South Africa is in a fortunate position, Jared, that we are blessed with minerals.
We're one of a few countries.
So illegal mining doesn't only deal with gold. I know gold is the one that is more publicized and all of that, but it is wide ranging in terms of what is happening.
It's gold right at the top, obviously, it's diamonds. You've got copper, you got electricity, cable. Because illegal mining doesn't only include these people going underground, it includes them going underground to go look for what? For copper wires, electric line cables.
Diesel is quite a big part of that because it enables illegal mining activities to happen. Explosives. You can't mine without explosives.
The issue of explosives, I'm not saying they're being mined, but I'm saying the supply chain, the value chain of the supply of these explosives, a lot of emphasis need to be placed on that because they encourage or they enable this process.
And another phenomenon which has been there for years in South Africa is that we've got a lot of mine dams.
Some are still owned by licensed large scale miners. Some have been abandoned.
These mine dams, particularly in the know west trends. It's Franfontein Kruger's door. Some parts of Johannesburg, let's say Hauten province. Out of the nine provinces, there's quite a lot of mine dams, particularly gold, which now belong to the state because the licensees lost their license to operate. So mine dumps are another big source of illegal mining operations.
It's impossible to even quantify the damage to the environment that this is doing. So from gold right down to abundant mine dumps. And most people mistaken the issue of mine dumps to say, even shafts. Especially the issue of shafts. Most people mistaken that to mean when you say a mining shaft is illegally being mined, you're referring to a mine shaft that was left open by Mr. X, who was licensed to mine. And Mr. X decided, I have no money anymore. I'm getting on my plane, I'm leaving South Africa. No, it's not necessarily the case. There are mine shafts which are illegally mined which were properly closed and rehabilitated.
But because these people know what is still left underneath, they go and blow them open.
They blow these properly closed and rehabilitated shafts, blow them open and continue with their illegal mining operations in them.
In a nutshell, there might be more. But in a nutshell, this is what I mostly see as being the target of these illegal mining operations.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: But, Stephen, just tell. Yeah, go you.
[00:16:20] Speaker C: Thank you for that. Just one last point on that.
South Africa is going through a big issue called load sheding that the government is trying to fix. We all know about it. I don't need to explain it.
[00:16:37] Speaker D: Another problem that makes it worse is.
[00:16:41] Speaker C: That when an illegal mining operation takes.
[00:16:44] Speaker D: Place near a suburb, the substation of.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: That suburb will be connected illegally to an illegal mining operation, and that whole suburb will be without electricity. When even when they're supposed to be having electricity, there will be no electricity. And that happened in one area, in a place called Krugerstop. They did not have electricity for a long time because their substation was illegally connected to an illegal mining operation. The police and the soldiers had to come and put a stop to that so that citizens could have electricity.
Thank you.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Stephen, I want to ask you, and this is a two part question. Firstly, with regards to the mine dumps, I mean, forget about the fact about the illegal mining activities, but there's also been other consequences and other heinous crimes that have taken place. Particularly, you would remember last year at Krugerstorp mine dump, where there were a number of females that were raped by allegedly illegal miners.
So that's one part of it. The second thing is, you've mentioned that the miners know what's down in the ground after a shaft has been closed, and hence that's why they blow it up. And then they also take a major risk in going underground.
So my question is, the people that are doing these criminal activities, are these former miners, for the most part, that know what's in the ore body, or is it just people that have no other choice because they're unemployed and this is the reason why they are visiting the mind dumps, getting involved in blowing up closed and rehabilitated shops in order to try and make an income.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: Well, interestingly, that's what a lot of people used to think until.
[00:19:06] Speaker D: The then.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: Chamber of mines, the South African Human Rights Commission, did a thorough study into this phenomenon.
[00:19:15] Speaker D: And it turned out that it is.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Not necessarily people who used to be mine workers who are exclusively involved in illegal mining of these mine dumps, or even the closed or unrehabilitated mind dumps.
It cuts across is everyone who feels I need a job from these illegal mining activities, they will teach me what to do. So it cuts across. It's not necessarily former miners. Yes, the perception was there, and the perception is still there, that it is exclusively former miners who are retrenched or whose operations closed and all of that. Yes, to a certain extent they are involved, but not exclusively. It cuts across.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Okay, Stephen, let's turn our attention to Beech Feltman, of which you are director of. How does your company support clients in instances where illegal mining interferes with current projects?
[00:20:29] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: We do that quite a lot, Jared, because one of the philosophies that we have as a firm is management by walkabout.
And when you translate that into a law firm that works in the mining.
[00:20:49] Speaker D: Industry, we have to be at site.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: We have to be at these mining operations almost weekly. You'll never find a lot of us in our offices. We always had mining operations, talking to them, seeing how they do things and all of that. And one of the things that we always emphasize and we do training to our mining clients on this subject is that when you're a mining, a large scale miner, and you come into a village to come and mine whatever you mine legally. So because you got a license, got finance, you got technical skill, technology and everything, there's always this us and them view from the local community say, oh, there they are, coming to steal our minerals, leaving us with nothing, no jobs, no business opportunities or anything. So what we emphasize is that, yes, the illegal license from Department of Mineral and Energy, it's not enough for you to operate in a community peaceful. You can operate, but you need to obtain, in addition to that, a social license to operate. It is something that's not written on paper.
It is building a relationship with the community within which you operate.
And if you look at most of our clients, not most, all of them, they've got community initiatives, from education, to offering business opportunities, to local business entrepreneurs, even training some of them, affording them opportunities to be able to generate income from their own mining operations, offering jobs to local communities. Even though there's still this misconception that mines must exclusively employ people from that community, that is not correct. That is absolutely not correct. And that's one thing I need to correct.
But they do, to a large extent, look after their local communities, including the infrastructure. They know that we're going to be using these roads, we're going to be using the water.
Our blasting activities may affect the housing, the health of the local communities. So things like putting up notices, notifying your communities when you're going to do blastings, and forming inter mine and community platforms where issues of possible damages to housing or contamination of water, of roads and all of that are discussed. A lot of these mining companies have those kind of interactions with communities and the minute you have that, that solidifies your social license to operate, which in turn makes your legal license to operate much simpler to utilize. So that's what we encourage them to do. And the other thing is to say to them, when you close an operation or when you close a shaft, or at the beginning when you draft your.
[00:24:26] Speaker D: Social labor plan, please take into account.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: That some of the people that we employ do not necessarily come from the same village and do not necessarily come from South Africa. They may be coming from Lesotho, too. They may be coming from Zimbabwe, Mozambique. And when they leave their jobs here, because your operation is closed, their reality is that they're going to go back home and remain unemployed.
So we encourage them to, say, broaden your slps. Your social labor plans to make sure that you cater not only for the local community where you operate, you cater for everyone that you employ, whether they come from South Africa or they come from neighboring countries. Include everyone. Reskill people when you close your operations or when you retrench them. Because business is a business. They are there to generate profit. If your shaft is not profitable and they close it, there's nothing wrong with that. But what they need to do is to make sure that as they retrench those people, they've been reskilled, giving new skills that they can use somewhere else. So that when these people who want to employ them to come and do illegal mining for them, then they won't be able to find them because they're employed elsewhere or they've started their own small businesses, they're okay. They don't need to involve themselves in illegal activities like illegal mining.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
Steven, you touch on a very interesting point about a social license to operate. Now, you've also mentioned that illegal mining is quite a sophisticated crime operation. My question to you is, if mining companies, if they engage actively with communities, will this help to eradicate this problem? Because you must remember as well, that when these criminals. And I'm going to say that word, when these criminals go underground or operating on mine dumps, et cetera, there are offshoots to this. Somebody has to supply them with food. Somebody has to, as you've correctly mentioned, has to supply the electricity, the diesel, the explosives, et cetera. So when mining companies, if they actively engage with the communities, will the communities then stand up and say, this is what's happening, there's an illegal operation.
[00:27:19] Speaker D: Let the law take its course?
[00:27:22] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:27:24] Speaker D: It is very important for not only.
[00:27:28] Speaker C: The mining industry, for any business to survive in a community, you need to have a good relationship with that social mining, social license to operate.
The important aspect about the resultant aspect of that, which is very important, is.
[00:27:49] Speaker D: That when the community trusts you as.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: A business, then they are able to.
[00:27:56] Speaker D: Alert you to, say, the shaft that.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: You closed temporarily, or you put on care and maintenance. We know that there's people who are planning to reopen it illegally and mine it. Then they're able to alert you not only to illegal mining activities, but to quite a lot of things because they trust you.
They trust that when they tell you things, when they report things to you, you will act on them. And we also encourage them to say, yes, as a mine, you do have your own security service and all of that, but work very closely with the local police. If there is a defense force which has been placed in your area to monitor certain illegal mining activities, work closely with them as well, because as the community works with you and gives you information, you can only do so much as a mining operation. You are not a police force. You do certain things beyond your powers, then you are breaking the law as outlined. So we discourage them from doing anything that's beyond their powers. So they need to then take that information, process it, then hand it over to the police and assist the police, our intelligence service, our defense force, to make sure that they feed them with this information so that they can be able to deal with this issue. So this is a multifaceted issue that requires a collaboration across all the spectrums. Across all the spectrums, community, the mine, the police, the defense force, the intelligence service, you name it, all of them. But everything starts with the community.
[00:29:52] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Stephen, I want to bring you back to your company, Beach Feltman. Now, when it comes to profile illegal mining, aside from market share and access to resources, are there any other considerations that are taken into account? And talk to me about health and safety and also other labor considerations that might come into play?
[00:30:20] Speaker C: Well, the impact of illegal mining is quite wide and it involves quite painful impact on South Africa from, for example, gender based violence and femicide.
We have an incident that happened in Krugerstop where a group of women were raped and treated horrendously, dehumanized by illegal minors.
And not only them, even the local community was living in fear.
They lived like prisoners in their own township.
So when we talk about profiling these.
[00:31:12] Speaker D: People, we need to stop the habit.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: Of saying undocumented or illegal immigrants are illegal minors in South Africa.
That is an absolute untruth and we need to stop talking about it now like you've correctly raised it with me to deal with illegal miners.
Illegal miners involved in the entire value chain of illegal mining do not exclusively include undocumented foreigners or illegal foreigners into South Africa.
Quite a number.
Quite a number of South Africans are involved in this activity. Quite a lot of them. And our communities know who these people are.
Hence, to take you back just for a second to the issue of working with communities, the communities know who these people are, and they can be able to inform the minds, the police, the defense force, the intelligence and whoever. But on the basis of trust, nobody can tell you such a thing if they don't trust you. So it's not exclusively illegal miners when involved in blundering our resources?
[00:32:36] Speaker D: No.
[00:32:37] Speaker C: There's a lot of South Africans who are doing this and benefiting financially from. And it's been happening for ages. It's not a new phenomenon. It's just that it has not been.
[00:32:48] Speaker D: Spoken about until the Human Rights Commission.
[00:32:52] Speaker C: In 2015 released a report that says, absolutely South Africans are definitely involved in this.
So it's not only foreigners, South Africans are involved.
[00:33:04] Speaker D: The communities are the ones who are.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: At the receiving end of this horrendous activity, illegal activity called illegal mining. There's another phenomenon that we are forgetting about.
It is human trafficking.
[00:33:25] Speaker D: These undocumented immigrants or illegal immigrants who work in these illegal mining operations, a lot of them are miners who have.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Been trafficked from their countries by the big shots, are minors. So there's a lot of human trafficking involved in these activities.
[00:33:51] Speaker D: Hence, when I started at the beginning.
[00:33:54] Speaker C: I referred to the United nations to say, because this is a global issue, human trafficking is a global issue. It does not only affect illegal mining, does not only affect South Africa, it is a global issue. So there's quite a lot of issues involved.
[00:34:14] Speaker D: Now let's talk about issues like environment.
[00:34:18] Speaker C: When you use mercury and other highly.
[00:34:23] Speaker D: Highly toxic and powerful chemicals unsupervised, you.
[00:34:29] Speaker C: Are unskilled in using that. You've just been told by someone used to work in the mine, I used to sue my boss, do this, do this with mercury.
Imagine the impact to the environment that you do, the impact to the health of the citizens who live in areas around illegal mining. It is just unimaginable.
The environment is decimated and it takes years and years to rehabilitate to what it used to be.
Governance.
[00:35:04] Speaker D: Governance.
[00:35:05] Speaker C: For example, how will a government operate properly in an area where even the citizens are afraid to talk to the government and say, we have this problem and we know who's causing across it cuts across the environment, is decimated. There's issues of gender, based violence, which is a scarcity not only in South Africa, but the world over. Gender based violence is quite a serious issue and there's a lot of it going on in these illegal mining activities. Environments. The use of illegal, illegal chemicals, not illegal chemicals, but highly toxic chemicals that need to be used in a regulated environment. You don't find that. And this illegal activity is also.
[00:36:01] Speaker D: I mean, you go to a mining.
[00:36:03] Speaker C: Operation, you'll find there's procedures for everything.
You open an explosive, there's a procedure for that. How do you use this explosive? Where do you store it?
[00:36:13] Speaker D: Who keeps the key, this chemical?
[00:36:15] Speaker C: The same procedure. There's a procedure for everything in an illegal mining activity. Where do you find those things? They are nonexistent. So even the lives of the people who are involved in illegal mining itself are in serious danger. That's why when these shafts collapse with.
[00:36:36] Speaker D: Them underground, we get surprised because they.
[00:36:42] Speaker C: Think they know what they are doing. But without the technologies, the procedures, the expertise and the knowledge that the large.
[00:36:50] Speaker D: Scale miners have, the activities are inherently extremely dangerous.
Thanks.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: Thank you, Stephen. You've touched on a very interesting point because know, in my research coming into this, know, just looking at the stats of illegal miners and the number that were arrested last year, the minister of defense said it was somewhere around the 3000 mark.
And she clearly pointed out that there were x number of Mozambiqueans, there were x number from Kenya, x number from the DRC, et cetera.
If this information that goes out into mainstream media is painting a portrait to say that it is undocumented foreign nationals that are coming into this country and are engaged in their activities. So my question to you is, how do we change this narrative?
[00:37:59] Speaker C: It has to be changed because if.
[00:38:03] Speaker D: It'S not changed, and we focus mainly.
[00:38:07] Speaker C: On the undocumented foreigners, we are creating a very dangerous situation for South Africa because it will mean South Africans who are involved in illegal mining activities are going to operate with impunity, because it will be thought if you're south African, you definitely have a license to do what you're doing. So the media need to be utilized.
[00:38:36] Speaker D: Quite a lot by government, by the.
[00:38:40] Speaker C: Mining industry, by all the stakeholders involved in trying to deal with a schedule of illegal mining, because there's a lot of misconceptions. One of them is the amount of money that our fiscal is losing.
Different numbers are being put around by different organizations and people. Tomorrow you hear this one saying it's 7 billion, this one saying it's 20 billions, this one say, no, it might be more.
We need information. Is power Jared, information is power. For example, when you talk about 3000, the number 3000 is way too low.
Is way, way too low. We're talking in the upwards of 30,000.
In the upwards of 30,000. Because if you look at the number of areas where illegal mining takes place throughout South Africa, definitely 3000 is a small number. Absolutely small. So information need to be sent out there for South Africans to be educated in terms of if the fiscal loses 20 billion or 50 billion, whatever the correct number is, that affects government's ability to put proper sanitation in your area, to provide you with proper schooling, free schooling, to provide you with a whole number of social issues that the government is supposed to provide in a normal democracy. But a bankrupt government can do that, you understand? Although there are other factors that may make government lose money, but this one definitely is making government lose money. So communities need to know these people are taking your money that the government is supposed to use to come and tie your roads, to come and supply you with sanitation, water, educate your children.
A lot of information needs to be put out there, information on profiling these people. They are not exclusively foreigners.
South Africans are involved.
[00:41:01] Speaker D: And not only South Africans, but highly.
[00:41:05] Speaker C: Respected business personalities internationally and corporations are involved in this activity.
Information need to be sent out there to make sure that people know about this.
And the media, the fourth estate, lays a critical role in making sure that correct and proper information is sent out.
[00:41:33] Speaker D: There daily to South Africans to know.
[00:41:39] Speaker C: Exactly what is the true situation of illegal mining.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I mean, Stephen, it's an interesting point you make, because it spills over. It doesn't just contain itself in the mining sector or illegal mining sector, because then you get the likes of political parties that harp on this fact that it's actually undocumented foreigners, or even sometimes documented foreigners that are playing a major part in these operations. And we all know what goes on after that.
Incidents of xenophobia, legitimate businesses in what we call townships, et cetera, being burned to the ground, people being chased out. So it definitely does spill over into the actual economy, doesn't it?
[00:42:45] Speaker C: Absolutely, it does. And misinformation is a very dangerous weapon, because when people are misinformed, then they do very silly things.
If acts of xenophobia continue, because people saying, if we attack, injure, or even maim, kill these illegal foreigners, crime will stop. Illegal mining will stop. Why, every time when xenophobic attacks happen, crime doesn't stop. Illegal mining doesn't stop. Yes, it is, because there's another element involved in this, which is us South Africans. We are involved in illegal mining.
And South Africans are not properly informed about this, and correctly so, there are politicians who will exploit this even though they know the truth. But if people are ignorant, keep them ignorant.
That's the name of the game.
So those who know the truth, let's put out the truth out there and educate.
[00:44:01] Speaker D: Make it a point, particularly the mining.
[00:44:05] Speaker C: Industry, to educate South Africans to say, this is the picture of illegal mining in South Africa. When you allow these things to happen in your communities and you don't communicate to us, this is what you lose. You don't only lose a mine that closes.
Your government loses so much money every year from these activities, and when it loses so much money, these are the things that you potentially lose from your government, because now it can't service you.
So information is key here. Yes, correctly, there are people who will continue to communicate wrong things and blame wrong people because it benefits them. But the truth out there is it's not only illegal immigrants who are involved in this. Yes, government is and is continuing to deal with the issue of illegal immigration, as are all governments in the world. I mean, look at America. Yes, look at America. The issue they're facing along the mexican border. All countries are grappling with the issue of illegal migration and all of that. But in South Africa, we must not say crime, particularly illegal mining, is exclusively caused by the issue of illegal migration. South Africans are involved, and this need to be emphasized and pushed out there. South Africans are definitely involved.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that conversation plays out in an election year, Stephen. But let's end on a somewhat positive note, and I'm coming back to beach Feltman now with something like illegal mining. The focus of entities operating in the sector should revolve around prevention over cure.
How does Beach Feltman support this preventative narrative, and what has been your success with?
[00:46:19] Speaker C: You know, that is absolutely correct.
Unless you deal with this right in the beginning, before it even starts, before it even starts, when you try to cure it at a later stage, it's too late. The horse has bolted. There's nothing you can do.
It's out of control.
What we emphasize is that even before.
[00:46:53] Speaker D: A mining operation starts, engage your communities.
Inform the communities to say, these are the potential criminal activities that may take.
[00:47:08] Speaker C: Place because we are here.
And if you do find those activities or you see them, please inform us.
We've got laws in this country that deal with things like protected disclosures.
You can go and make a declaration and be protected.
Your identity will not be known. So we emphasize a proactive approach that says, please engage with the communities.
They know who's doing what, they know who resides within them. They will be the first ones to come to you and talk to you. But without a proper relationship with them, that will not work correctly. And most importantly, build a solid relationship with your local police force. Because the minute you led them to incidents and we give them proper information, then they'll be able to act accordingly and faster.
So that kind of a collaborative approach, that's what we emphasize to say.
[00:48:23] Speaker D: Even before you start a shaft, this.
[00:48:27] Speaker C: Is what you need to start. Because without that, you're going to find out there are problems which you ignored. To address that, when you try to address them while your operation is in place, it's too late. There's little or nothing you can do.
[00:48:44] Speaker D: Absolutely.
Yeah.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: Stephen, you've certainly given us a lot of food for thought, and I'm sure there's going to be quite a few comments coming in from our listeners when they hear this podcast. Stephen Ntite, director of Beach Feltman, thank you very much for joining us on deep insights today.
[00:49:07] Speaker C: It's been quite a pleasure, Gerard, and looking forward to seeing you again.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
[00:49:14] Speaker A: Thank you for joining deep insights today. Remember, you can listen to other episodes on your preferred podcast platform or on miningreview.com. Until next time, goodbye.
