The Cooke lesson must be taken to heart and South Africans should stand together to ensure that there is no recurrence of the needless job destruction that has taken place at the West Rand gold mine, where public statements about the dangers of illegal mining were made repeatedly, but the authorities did nothing to stop it.

The Ministry of Mineral Resources pretended that it did not exist, even though it was being shouted from the rooftops that illegal miners  had infiltrated a licensed, royalty-paying mine that was complying with the myriad of expensive obligations laid down in the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act and the regulatory framework that surrounds it.

Even worse, some of the employees of the gold mine, who draw  salaries and receive provident fund and medical aid benefits, were found to be collaborating with the illegal miners and are therefore accessories after the fact to the illegal mining and the dangers that go with it. But, like the Ministry of Mineral Resources and the South African Police Service, formal-sector union leadership pretended that it was not happening and turned a blind eye to their errant union members who were aiding and abetting the resources criminals.

At wits’ end and having to pay a fortune for private-sector  security, the management of the Cooke mine, near Randfontein, banned all workers from taking food underground. That caused a stir and an illegal strike was called, adding more illegality to a compounding criminality. However, the food ban proved effective as it resulted in hundreds of illegal miners being forced to return to surface to get food and water and it allowed the mining company to suspend 123 employees  who were aiding and abetting the illegal infiltration.

The job loss has been horrendous and what is clear is that the  private sector is unable to stop illegal mining on its own. There has to be collective action across the private and public sectors, taking in the union movement and civil society. The knock-on effect of the 7 000 jobs lost at Cooke hurt 70 000, yet the Ministry of Mineral Resources continues to remain silent on the matter and the labour union movement chooses to ignore the damage done by its members.

How differently the new Ghana government has acted in West Africa, where illegal miners have been removed from Obuasi and government has acknowledged how bad the activity is for a  country’s economy. Sibanye-Stillwater VP Nash Lutchman estimates that the  company lost between 3% and 4% of its gold production to illegal miners, which equates to over R700-million in lost earnings.

The R700-million worth of gold illegal mining removed could have gone a long way towards preserving jobs at Cooke, as has been managed at Beatrix West, in the Free State, where 1 600 jobs have been  preserved through employer-employee  pragmatism and a will on all sides to cut costs and increase productivity. As Lutchman has pointed out, illegal  mining is by no means a victimless crime, as it costs South Africa an estimated R20-billion a year in lost mineral sales,  taxes and royalties and simply has to be stopped.