In comment on Wednesday, BusinessLive noted that Pan African Resources (PAR), a gold miner in Mpumalanga, has doubled spending on security to R106m to prevent illegal mining primarily at its Barberton property.  

Barberton, which has been mined since 1886, is a Swiss cheese of shafts and underground workings in the hills bordering Swaziland.  A decade ago there was a huge rise in illegal mining around the town where PAR is essentially the only mining game in town.  The company clamped down as much as it could with its internal security and the assistance of police.  PAR CEO Cobus Loots said at the company’s annual results briefing last week that if the company had not more than doubled spending on security to R106m its operations would have been overrun by illegal miners.  “We can, in the normal course, protect our operations at a cost, but illegal mining and its effect of unsettling communities and adversely affecting mining economies is beyond the scope of mining houses to resolve on their own,” Loots said.  BusinessLive says that greater collaboration between gold mining companies, police and the judiciary, combined with the political will to address a problem that is now a multimillion-rand criminal business with no benefit to the fiscus or SA at large, needs urgent attention.

• Read the full original of the above comment at BusinessLive (paywall access only)

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