The South African Police Service will establish a specialised force to combat illegal mining that\u2019s robbing the nation of revenue and hampering operations at mineral companies.<\/p>\n
The new security force will be a \u201cmulti-disciplinary unit\u201d between the SAPS and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, the energy, minerals and resource minister told lawmakers in Cape Town on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Illegal mining has long been a problem in South Africa. That\u2019s now been coupled with thefts of equipment.<\/p>\n
The criminal activity affects vital infrastructure from railways to telecommunications to utilities, undermining President Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s efforts to revive the economy.<\/p>\n
The thefts and illegal mining have become increasingly lucrative with prices of metals such as copper surging.<\/p>\n
The illegal miners are the \u201cfoot soldiers of organised crime,\u201d and their widespread use of derelict and abandoned mines was a \u2018\u2019war on the South African economy,\u201d Mantashe said.<\/p>\n
The South African Police Service will establish a specialised force to combat illegal mining that\u2019s robbing the nation of revenue and hampering operations at mineral companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":140526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[69255,10670,55776,55824,19238],"class_list":["post-459939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-department-of-mineral-resources-and-energy-dmre","tag-gwede-mantashe","tag-illegal-miners","tag-illegal-mining","tag-south-african-police-service-saps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}