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Following confirmation of the deaths of two illegal miners at the Lily Mine in Mpumalanga, ActionSA demands that the Minister of Police and the Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources urgently account for the escalating proliferation of illegal mining, despite repeated warnings about the growing criminality at the site and the fact that it appears that there was an endeavour to keep the deaths secret. 

This development comes on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Lily Mine Tragedy, which claimed the lives of three innocent mine workers who remain trapped underground to this day. For a decade, government inaction has denied their families justice and closure. As such, this prolonged failure has created the conditions for criminal syndicates to entrench themselves at the site, culminating in the confirmed deaths linked to illegal mining activities.

ActionSA will formally write to both Ministers to demand answers as to why government has not only continued to deny the families of the Lily Mine victims the dignity of retrieving and laying their loved ones to rest but has also allowed criminal syndicates engaged in illegal mining to operate unchecked, placing surrounding communities at risk.

It is clear that government has shown a profound disregard for the pain endured by these families, whose sole demand has been justice. This neglect has further exposed them to intolerable circumstances, as they continue to camp near the site where their loved ones remain trapped, while facing harassment from illegal miners and bearing witness to ongoing criminality in the complete absence of meaningful government intervention.

ActionSA will submit written questions to both Ministers and will further demand a probe into the outrage that, for ten years, government has claimed the mine is under business rescue and that negotiations to reopen it are ongoing, while the Minister and the Department of Mineral Resources have allowed illicit mining to flourish at the site, now resulting in loss of life. The Minister has consistently argued that it is unsafe to retrieve the container yet has allowed illegal mining to continue.

Issued by ActionSA Parliamentary leader Athol Trollip