Gold rush next to M2 threatens motorists

Illegal gold miners and vandals are threatening the safety of motorists using one of Gauteng's busiest highways.

They are attacking motorists and road-workers, and causing millions of rands of damage to roads infrastructure.

Along the M2 highway between Denver and Jeppe, near the Johannesburg city centre, illegal miners are digging for gold metres from the road.

Their proximity to the major arterial route into the city has the Johannesburg Roads Agency worried.

The a gency estimates it spends between R60-million and R80-million a year on replacing its stolen or damaged property along Johannesburg's roads .

Some sites at which illegal miners operate have become no-go zones for motorists.

Gangs, some armed, are becoming increasingly aggressive, according to the Johannesburg Metro Police.

The metro police said there had been instances of motorists whose cars had broken down being attacked.

When The Times visited these sites last week, evidence of illegal mining could be seen only 10m from the highway.

There are fears that the illegal miners will start to dig under the M2 and cause structural damage to the road.

At one illegal mining site near Cleveland Road, close to Denver, miners are digging where contractors are laying cables for the roads agency's intelligent freeway monitoring system.

The agency said there was a possibility illegal miners and vandals would threaten the workers.

Agency spokesman Bertha Peters-Scheepers said a security guard had been shot dead and there had been isolated incidents of violence in which workers had been robbed of equipment and assaulted.

She said the agency's freeway monitoring system, intended to manage traffic flow, had been plagued by the theft of cables.

The materials stolen were sold as scrap.

Wits anthropology professor Robert Thornton, who has studied illegal mining in South Africa and Zimbabwe, said near the Zimbabwean town of Masvingo, illegal miners had destroyed roads.

He said it was seldom the miners who were violent - it was the guards who protected them from rival gangs and the police.

Peters-Scheepers said at the moment the Joburg miners' depredations were limited to the theft of hand railing, guard-rail materials and steel manhole covers. The roads a gency hopes the municipal Infrastructure Protection Unit, to be formed next month, will help . The u nit will be manned by City Power, the police and metro police, and other security organisations.

The city plans to replace metal products with other, less desirable, materials to reduce theft.