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With the Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources and the Police set to be briefed by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation on “illegal mining” tomorrow, Police in Kimberly have illegally started to evict Zama-Zama Miners in Kimberly.

The evictions are illegal according to the miners legal representative Johan Lorenzen of Richard Spoor attorneys. “”our clients right to be on the land is in dispute before the Constitutional Court. As a Matter of law an application for leave to appeal suspends an order of the court” he said as he pleaded with Colonel Sonti who was leading a team of 30 Police officers and at least another 30 security guards believed to be from Ekapa Mining Company.

In his plea to Colonel Sonti, the legal representative of the miners urged the Police to wait for the Court`s decision and warned that should any harm come to their clients that the Colonel would be held personally liable.

But these please fell on deaf ears as the determined police stormed the site where Zama-Zama miners had been working for almost a decade.

The Zama-Zama Miners representative Luckyboy Seekoei said that the Miners had decided to retreat for now but that they would regroup in the morning to decide on their strategy going forward.

The illegal raid comes a week after the Department of Mineral Resources promised to respond to the Miners demands after they had delivered a memorandum to the DMR on Tuesday last week, “To date we have not heard from the DMR and the fact that Parliament still refers to our legitimate labour as illegal says a lot about how little value we hold for political parties. We only count at voting times. But we have had enough and we will not sit back and allow this government to de-humanise us like the apartheid colonial governments did. We have rights”, said Mr Seekoei as the police hovered ominously in the background.

Meanwhile ActionAid South Africa`s Christopher Rutledge said that “It is a sad day when hard working citizens are driven from the places where they seek to reclaim their humanity by illegal actions which are apparently the outcome of an illegal and historically strong relationship between corporate greed and state abuse of citizens”.

“We call on the Police to immediately seize and desist from their illegal actions and for the DMR and Parliament to urgently start the process of speaking to Zama-Zama`s as equal citizens who have rights and who are desperately trying to place food on the table. The statistician generals statistics are not just numbers, they refer to real people. The callous disregard for people must come to an end” said Rutledge.

Issued by ActionAid