The Zama-Zamas impasse at Stilfontein mine shafts is a war of attrition between law-enforcement and lawlessness in South Africa.
Needless to say, a war of attrition is a situation whereby both sides involved in a conflict continue to fight irrespective of the casualties and criticism they are suffering, with the hope that the other side to the conflict will eventually get tired of fighting and call for a truce.
The Zama-Zamas brigade know very well that they are at fault as they have transgressed South African laws.
But they will stay on comfortably underground and use every legal trick hoping that the law-enforcement agencies will tire of their efforts to bring them to justice and eventually leave them alone to continue to do as they wish in South Africa.
And what irks me is the lame excuse given by those who support the Zama-Zamas in their criminal activities.
The Zama-Zamas supporters say their idols went underground in order to earn a living as they are poor and also because the mine shafts were not properly shut down by the previous owners, thus giving them easy access to the shafts.
This is more like saying, if I don’t lock my house or car then anyone has a right to get into it and occupy it as their own.
Then when I come back from wherever I have been to and demand that the criminal must vacate my house or car, I am told that I must give the criminal food, water and medication so that the criminal may be healthy and strong and continue to ransack my house or car and that I must not regard the whole incident as a crime scene.
I am told that letting the criminal do as he wishes inside my house or car with impunity will save lives and that it is a gesture of humanitarianism.
Supporters of the Zama-Zamas are complicit to the crime of illegal mining that is taking place at the Stilfonein mine shafts and also at other mining shafts in the country.
Now the chips are down, and they are forced to expose themselves because the Zama-Zamas have all along been feeding and clothing them with proceeds of illegal mining activities.
This is the time for Zama-Zamas supporters to reciprocate the favours that the underground brigade has been showering on them all along.
There is a saying that goes: kill the messenger and the master will come out.
And indeed, the masters of the Zama-Zamas have come out masquerading as the Human Rights Commission, Lawyers for Human Rights and “concerned members of the community.”
Despite engaging in illegal mines, Zama-Zamas are alleged to have committed numerous crimes like rape and murder, and when the police look for them, they simply go into the mine shafts and hide themselves therein, only to resurface some few months or years later and commit another crime and go back underground into the mine shafts yet again.
And if anyone says the aforesaid allegations have not been proved against the Zama Zamas, my response is: let the Zama-Zamas stop hiding underground then and resurface so that they can dispute allegations levelled at them in a court of law.
The recent court judgment which tries to order the police as to what to do at Stilfontein mines is an attempt to tell the police as to how they must conduct themselves when dealing with a crime scene, and this court judgment is a classic case of judicial overreach and therefore out of order and was not delivered with a sober mind.
All that the police are doing there is to wait patiently for the roguish Zama-Zamas elements to come up to the surface and arrest them.
If police are forced to let the Zama-Zamas go free on this crime, then that will set a dangerous precedence in the country’s law enforcement activities; a precedence that says it is alright to take the police to court to get them off your back while committing a crime.
My message to the SAPS is: arrest, arrest and arrest some more Zama-Zamas now!