MINE SECURITY
Harmony Gold nabs dozens of crooks
In a long overdue "first", Harmony Gold backs anti-crime operations leading to arrest of 114 on multiple allegations, ranging from looting of gold-bearing ores to explosives, and beyond.
Author: Barry Sergeant
Posted: Thursday , 12 Mar 2009
JOHANNESBURG -
Harmony Gold, a global Tier I gold miner, has announced the arrest of 114 people and the confiscation of goods looted from a number of Harmony mines in South Africa. The items include explosives, cash, gold bearing material, mine property and foodstuffs. "Operation Zama", which also involved the South African Police Services, Department of Justice and private security units, has been described as "a success and the first of its kind".
For decades, criminals have each year made fortunes by looting from South African mines, especially those involved in precious metals. The dimensions of the activities were described in detail in an April 2001 report by the Institute for Security Studies, "Theft of precious metals from South African mines and refineries".
The report stated that "it became evident during interviews conducted for the study that there is a general perception in the mining industry that most stolen product sold on the black market ends up in some organised illegal business or syndicate. It is presumed top-level syndicate members, who supply organised criminal dealers, dispose of the largest volume of stolen product".
While Harmony's operation may have nabbed mostly lower level members of such syndicates, Harmony has described its actions as "proactive". Operation Zama was "executed over a 10-day period to identify and remove criminal miners from eight of the company's Free State mines". Among the 114 people arrested by the SAPS during the operation, no less than 19 were mine employees; five were employees of Harmony contractors. Harmony has since taken disciplinary action against its employees, by suspending and laying criminal charges against them.
According to experts independent of Operation Zama, one of the key reasons for its success was the focus on stolen explosives materials, which are specially classified. While the possession of "unwrought" gold in South Africa remains unlawful, it has always been difficult to make the charges stick. Another aspect of stolen explosives is well known domestically, in the form of dozens upon dozens of "bombings" of automatic teller machines (ATMs), normally in the dead of night.
In its statement on Operation Zama, Harmony politely said that "criminal miners not only pose a clear health and safety hazard to themselves and to Harmony's own employees as a result of their unsafe actions, but they also cost the company through disruption to operations, theft of equipment and material, and the potential loss in production". While the activities of these freelance miners does not quite resemble the 80,000 or so garimpieros who at Serra Pelada (now owned by Colossus Minerals)staged the biggest gold rush seen in South American history, big risks can mean big rewards, deep below South Africa's surface.
In a statement, Harmony CEO Graham Briggs said that "As part of Harmony's ongoing initiatives to combat this problem we have tightened security at the shaft heads, we conduct frequent spot inspections underground and we have gone to the extent of reducing the amount of food taken underground". This all but confirms what has long been known about gangs of dangerous men spending long periods underground, high grading select areas.
Times are tougher than for years, raising the levels of risks that indigents are prepared to face. On 24 February, Pan African Resources announced that "trespassers conducting illegal mining activity set a fire on the Consort mine at Barberton on Saturday, 21 February 2009". Unlike the ores mined on the Witwatersrand, the Barberton area hosts greenstones, where gold is often visible to the naked eye. The bodies of five of the illegal miners at Consort were later found underground.