Let’s Promote Artisanal Mining in South Africa to Curb Illegal Practices: Catholic Bishop

Johannesburg, 13 October, 2025 / 6:59 PM

To curb illegal mining and promote sustainable livelihoods, Bishop Victor Hlolo Phalana of South Africa’s Klerksdorp Catholic Diocese has called for the legalization and promotion of artisanal mining, particularly to empower young people in the country.

In an interview with the Communication Officer of Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC), Sheila Pires, Bishop Phalana urged the South African government to develop new and practical mechanisms to regulate the country’s widespread illegal mining activities.

“We need to promote artisanal mining in South Africa and make it possible for young people who would like to do mining to get some kind of training,” he said in the interview published on YouTube Monday, October 13.

The South African Catholic Bishop also proposed support from government, a permit of some kind, skills, tools, and any other ways that can be exploited as long as it serves the purpose of regulating illegal mining and enabling the youth to participate legally in the activity.

“Our engagement with the government will be to see to it that the government does its part in promoting artisanal mining, and for us, encouraging young people to form cooperatives and maybe somehow to come and get the skills and get the necessary training and assistance to be able to do that kind of informal artisanal mining. We supported it,” he said.

Bishop Phalana who has been at the helm of Klerksdorp Diocese since his Episcopal Ordination in January 2015 went on to reflect on the Church’s pastoral response to the informal miners working in illegal and unsafe conditions.

He emphasized that the Church’s response should begin with closer collaboration between the SACBC Justice and Peace Commission and the Office for Migrants and Refugees, to examine and strengthen the Church’s pastoral approach to the complex reality of illegal mining, commonly known as Zama Zamas.

“Once they come into a country like South Africa, they are immediately declared illegal, and they are also called criminals. We know that most of them are here because they are looking for a better life. Some of them were lured into this kind of work because of a promise of a job,” he said.

Bishop Phalana added, “Our response has to always be on the side of the law, to say okay, let the law take its course, people have to be legal in the country, but once they are here, they have to also enjoy the protection of the law of the country. They have to be registered somehow. They have to be acknowledged somehow.”

He emphasized that the Church’s longstanding decision on the issue of illegal mining, even during the discovery of 78 bodies in a shaft in the country’s North West Province in January, has always been to safeguard human life.

“Save lives. That was our position. Save lives. All the other things can be dealt with. But the most important thing, the most urgent thing at the moment — please help them, assist them to come out,” he said.

He continued, “Once they are out, then you can give them to Home Affairs, send them back home, take them to the hospitals and give them medical attention, but save them.”

“And that was our appeal. And we were doing it from a moral, spiritual point of view. And we were called names, of course, by those who were saying, ‘No, let them die.’ We said no, it is not Christian, and it is not human to let people die. They are here already, and they are vulnerable. We have to assist them and then help them to reconcile with their families, reconcile with their communities, and also let them get healthy,” Bishop Phalana explained.