Gang attacks on gold mines almost double
At 10pm on the second Sunday in December, a criminal platoon armed with AK-47 and R6 assault rifles stormed one of the largest gold mines still operating on South Africa’s fabled Witwatersrand basin.
Moving with military precision, the 15 attackers took hostages and plundered the smelting plant at Gold Fields’s South Deep mine. While failing to break into the main vault, the gang escaped three hours later with gold concentrate worth $500 000 (about R7.5 million).
Gold mines are soft targets for syndicates that previously specialised in cash-in-transit heists. Their foot soldiers outgun a demoralised police force and pile woes on a gold industry in the final stages of a decades-long death spiral.
“Mining companies are being attacked by thugs and armed gangs and there is a lack of police response,” said Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye Gold, which repelled an attack on its Cooke mine two weeks ago. “It eventually has a knock-on impact into society, it’s lawlessness, it’s anarchy.”
There were 19 attacks on gold facilities last year, almost double the number in 2018, according to South Africa’s Minerals Council. More than 100kg of gold was stolen in 2019 as bullion rose to a five-year high, although not all companies disclose their losses, said the council, which represents the nation’s largest miners.
“The fundamental problem is police are not getting on top of organised violent crimes,” said Gareth Newham, who heads the justice and violence prevention programme at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. “We are seeing a deterioration in our policing capacity.”
After meeting with gold mining companies in October, Minister of Police Bheki Cele is considering setting up a task force to tackle the violence, said Lirandzu Themba, a spokesperson for the ministry.
Sibanye has also strengthened its defences after the gold producer repelled several attacks last year, said head of security Nash Lutchman. Combat training is now standard for guards, who wear bulletproof jackets and patrol in armoured vehicles at night.
Still, their shotguns and 9-millimetre pistols can’t compete with the automatic weapons used by gangs. The raids take months to plan, with the gangsters coercing mine employees to provide inside knowledge, Lutchman said.
In the final quarter of last year, both Harmony Gold and DRDGold had fatalities during assaults. – Bloomberg