18,000 foreigners in SA prisons, says Cele after arrest of 350 West Rand zama zamas

About 350 zama zamas have been arrested on the West Rand since the unrest in the wake of the gang rape of eight women at a disused mine on July 30, allegedly by informal miners.

Of the 350, “almost all of them are foreign nationals” from Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Police minister Bheki Cele told a virtual sitting of the National Council of Provinces that  18,000 of SA's 144,000 prison inmates are foreigners, leading to overcrowded prisons.

He lauded the police for curbing illegal mining and quelling tensions on the West Rand.

Twenty perpetrators were allegedly involved in raping the eight women, and police have so far apprehended 14 suspects. Six are still being sought.

“All 14 have been positively identified. We now continue to work on the DNA to further link [them] with the rape of the women.”

Police have arrested about 4,000 zama zamas since last year, some of whom are teenagers as young as 14, also foreigners.

Cele called on the home affairs department to play its part in ensuring foreigners arrested for illegal mining are deported. 

It was worrying that some of the zama zamas were minors, which raised questions about who brought them into the country, Cele said.

“This means there is some element of human trafficking of these young ones. You ask them 'where do you come from?', they say 'from Maputo', and definitely in Maputo there is no 14-year-old that knows there is a town called Krugersdorp, so somebody, in an organised way, would have dropped them there.

“They are armed. That is why there are preparations, and our highly skilled units are dealing with those issues to make sure zama zamas are neutralised as economic sabotage and criminality.”

He denied police were not doing anything to stop illegal mining and other crime, and said not all foreigners were criminals.

“There is this narrative that all people doing crime in SA are foreign nationals. Yes, there are many of them doing crime and many of them who must be taken back.”