SEKHUKHUNE
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Limpopo say they will write to Premier, Dr Phophi Ramathuba, to demand a province-wide multi-sectoral plan to dismantle the province’s growing illegal-mining economy, warning that Sekhukhune has become the organized centre of the criminal enterprise.
According to DA Provincial Spokesperson for Economic Development, Environment and Tourism (LEDET), Jacques Smalle, a preliminary review by the party shows illegal mining has spread across all five districts over the past five years, with more than 50 sites or nodes identified and at least 19 hotspot clusters where activity continued or returned despite police raids and state intervention.
“Limpopo does not only have an illegal-mining problem. It has a repeat-site problem, and a governance failure. Raids and arrests alone are not working,” Smalle said.
Smalle said the party’s preliminary illegal-mining hotspot map paints a picture of a parallel criminal economy that undercuts legitimate businesses, deprives the fiscus of revenue and enriches syndicates at the expense of workers and communities.
Focusing on Sekhukhune, Smalle said the district is now the organized chrome centre of the illegal economy, with repeated activity at Atok, Ga-Phasha, Spitskop, Tweefontein and Diphale involving heavy machinery, trucks and chromite stockpiles.
He pointed to Atok, where the Bapedi Kingdom was recently forced to go to court over rampant illegal chrome mining and failing enforcement by the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, obtaining an order interdicting unlawful mining and allowing it to rehabilitate the affected land.
“Government keeps arresting zama-zamas at the bottom while leaving the illegal-mining business above them intact. What has been missing is the provincial government’s political will to act,” Smalle said.
Smalle says the Sekhukhune crisis is mirrored in other districts. He indicated that in the Sand River region of Vhembe, farmers continue to face brazen illegal sand mining, while an environmental authorization for sand mining on Farm Vera is under appeal amid concerns that consultation processes were subverted and that the proliferation of sand mining is causing cumulative environmental damage.
“In the Eerstegoud/Ysterberg region of Capricorn, farmers have lost all faith in SAPS and other authorities to stop illicit gold mining and live under siege,” he said.
In Mopani and Capricorn, Smalle said there are emerging organized illicit gold economies.
“At Mavalani, despite repeated operations in 2025, the police again uncovered suspected minerals, processing equipment, vehicles and firearms in May 2026. Vhembe suffers widespread illegal sand mining and questionable approvals that irreparably damage its rivers and water resources. These are not isolated zama-zama operations. They are criminal economies involving financiers, machinery owners, transporters, processors and buyers,” Smalle said.
He stressed that illegal mining can no longer be treated principally as a policing operation, but it must be treated as a criminal business to be dismantled from pit to purchaser.
Smalle said that the illicit economy flourishes where government institutions fail. He said police raid sites, arrest miners and seize machinery and vehicles, yet weeks or months later, mining is again reported at too many of the same hotspots.
He said Limpopo cannot build a growing economy while criminal networks exploit its mineral wealth, threaten and terrorize communities and farmers, and steal from the fiscus.
“The province must replace the illicit economy with a lawful economy that creates jobs, attracts investment and allows communities to benefit from development,” Smalle said.
He said the DA is calling on Premier Ramathuba to commit to and set out a province-wide multi-sectoral plan to target and dismantle the full value chain of the illegal-mining economy, from pit to purchaser, and to deal with repeat hotspots once and for all by following the money, targeting those who organize and profit, seizing criminal assets and ensuring closed sites do not reopen.