A community of informal waste recyclers from Mogale City has to pay a gang of illegal miners R50 a week to operate at the local dumpsite.
A recycler told the Sunday Times “about 200” recyclers lived together near the dump. “We are targeted by five or six Basotho [illegal] miners who operate near the dump. They come to us every Friday to collect their money. Each one of us must pay R50 or they will hurt or kill us,” said the recycler, who makes between R1,600 and R2,000 a month.
Another recycler says: “We carry plastic and other people’s rubbish. They carry guns. Of course we are scared of them.”
He said their work was difficult. “You start at about 7am and finish long after 5pm. I also earn just less than R2,000 a month normally, but now there is nothing,” he said, confirming his colleague’s claims about extortion.
“What can we do if these people have guns? The police sometimes come past, but they almost never go into the dump. They are also scared of those Basotho zama zamas. The only time we see a police van leaving the dump with someone in it, is when the police are giving [that person] a lift. No-one is ever arrested.”
Mogale City’s head of communications, Adrian Amod, admitted the town’s dump was under siege by criminals. He noted that they were responsible for frequent fires at the landfill.
The zama zamas have not yet started to attack landfill customers.
He said the city had laid charges of arson with the police. On Thursday, Gauteng police spokesperson Col Noxolo Kweza said they were “appealing to them [ recyclers] to come forward so we’re able to assist”.