Four illegal miners are expected in court after they were arrested on Thursday at a mine in Pongola in KwaZulu-Natal.
Police said officers, who are part of the Operation Vala Umgodi arrested the suspects after they were allegedly found in possession of gold-bearing material worth over R3 million.
They were nabbed at a mine in Ntumbane in the Pongola area.
KZN police spokesperson Colonel Robert Netshiunda said the intelligence-driven operation was conducted after police received information about illicit mining activities in the area.
“When police arrived on scene, the four suspected illegal miners were caught in the act of processing gold. They were found with mining equipment including explosives.”
The suspects, whose ages range between 27 and 40-years-old, are due to appear in the Pongola Magistrate’s Court on Friday.
Meanwhile, thousands of illegal miners are still trapped at the disused Stilfontein mine shaft in the North West.
This week, the High Court in Pretoria issued an interim order which ruled that the shaft may not be blocked by any person or institution, whether government or private.
The lawyer acting for the Society for the Protection of Our Constitution said the government should be compelled to help the trapped miners, and that using tactics such as starvation to try and force them out was tantamount to brutality, the Cape Times reported on Friday.
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