The first South African project to bring illegal miners into the formal fold has been plagued by violence in diamond capital Kimberley, dealing a major blow to national efforts to stem a booming illicit trade.
The project was launched 18 months ago in Kimberley, the site of a 19th-century diamond rush that lured fortune-seekers from the world over. Mine owners granted more than 800 unlicenced, or informal, small-scale miners the right to legally mine about 1500 acres of diamond-rich waste fields.
While the government has always acted in an advisory capacity, it indicated it may now be forced to take a more active role in the project, the first to attempt so-called formalisation in the mining industry. In a bid to stem that, the company formed 836 miners into the Batho Pele mining cooperative and gave them a licence to mine the fields.Illegal miners who are not part of the cooperative have stolen fences, petrol-bombed three Ekapa trucks, blocked access roads with rocks and burning tyres, and sabotaged a waste pipeline, shutting down its plant, according to Ekapa.
A police spokesperson said its records show 22 criminal incidents linked to illegal mining across Ekapa’s property and the area mined by Batho Pele between March and October this year, including an attempted murder and three serious assaults.DIRTY WORK Moses Wild and Fahrana Dawson sift sand to find diamonds
In contrast with other African countries such as Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Tanzania, South African law has no provisions for this.
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