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Police blame illegal miners from Lesotho for violent Riverlea attacks

By Admin Writer
1 Aug 2023

Police Minister Bheki Cele has put the blame on violence linked to illegal mining in Riverlea, south of Johannesburg, on Lesotho nationals.

Bodies of suspected illegal miners were discovered in the area recently. Police linked them to a shootout between two rival groups of illegal miners who are also called zama zamas.

Cele was addressing the community that took to the streets on Monday, demanding that the government intervene immediately to prevent illicit mining in their area.

Cele says, “I have met the Minister of Police in Lesotho, not once, to raise the issues. Because most of the people that are causing trouble here are the Ba-Sotho, who come with their differences from home and come and fight here.”

“So, those are all fronts that we need to work on them but indeed as the police we need to create the space for other things to happen.”

On Monday, a group of concerned community members of Riverlea embarked on a protest, calling for urgent government intervention to end illegal mining in their community.

Mining analyst David van Wyk says if law enforcement doesn’t take decisive action urgently against illegal mining kingpins, there will be continuous bloodshed as a result of factions fighting over turf.

“Really I think that we need to look deeper than the actual foot soldiers, we need to find out who is actually behind this and we need to clamp down on the big guys. And unless we do that it’s just like with drugs we just going to endlessly deal with fighting in the streets without actually cutting off the head of the problem.”