Contact Me
Subscribe
Posts
All Comments
Search
Followers
Blog Archive
- ► 2012 (246)
- ► 2010 (847)
- ► 2009 (882)
About Me
- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
Springs families besieged by criminal gold-looters
09:16 | 
Posted by
A Stuijt |
The white mining-communities of South Africa live in a state of siege…
http://bit.ly/nzVo9E - Springs’ flourishing, gold-based economy collapsed after the deliberate Zuma/Mandela-owned Aurora Empowerment Systems’ gold-mine’ failures: the entire town now is under siege from warring illegal gold-miners and organised looting-gangs which are stripping the mines’ infrastructures for scrap-metal, gold-dust – and also increasingly attacking the white residents. This chaotic, devastating destruction of a once-flourishing mining industry repeats itself at many other mining-communities countrywide -- such as at Welkom and Orkney.
The economy of the once flourishing gold-mining community in Springs has practically collapsed after the local Grootvlei gold-mine was taken over by the Mandela/Zuma-owned black-economic-empowerment mining group Aurora. Now, the liquidators of the horrifically-looted gold-mines of Springs and Orkney are hoping that a new Chinese buyer, will be willing to cough up a mere R150-million for its flooded, totally looted remains. Meanwhile, the highly skilled expert deep-miners of Springs and Orkney, who once so ably ran the deepest gold-mines in the world, now have to survive on monthly food handouts from Solidarity Trade union’s Helping Hand charity. Squabbles have erupted in SA parliament between high-flying super-wealthy director Mandla Mandela and the trade-unions, who are still demanding that Aurora pay the miners what is owed them… http://bit.ly/qRc7Fx
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘Aurora Empowerment Systems are blatant liars…’ National Union of Mineworkers
Aug 9 2011 - The National Union of Mineworkers chief was outraged at the‘blatant lies told by Aurora Empowerment Systems directors to a parliamentary portfolio committee last Wednesday’. Its liquidators of Pamodzi Gold Enver Motala had called Aurora’s directors to the committee to present an overview of the current situation at the mine – including the threat to the entire town of Springs from the dangerously-acid and radioactive mine-water rising from its shafts after Aurora stopped pumping to stop the mine and its surroundings from flooding.
Former gold-mine owners Zondwa Mandela and Kulubuse Zuma own fleets of luxury cars and expensive home – but refuse to pay their former workers many millions of dollars in owed back-pay: blaming ‘illegal miners, the trade unions, the stopped state-subsidies for pumping…’
Num spokesman Lesiba Seshoka was outraged when he heard high-flying Aurora director Zondwa Mandela blaming ‘illegal miners, acid-mine drainage and the termination of a water pumping subsidy by the Department of Minerals and Resources and the trade unions Solidarity and NUM” for their present “cash-flow problems”. Mr Mandela did not explain why he still managed to own a fleet of luxury cars and lived a life of excessive luxury while his mine-workers hadn’t been paid for years. .NUM denied claims by Aurora’s commercial director Thulani Ngobane that “all the NUM-affiliated members at Grootvlei and more than 80% at Aurora’s Orkney mine had been paid”. Simply not true, said Ngobane: on March 17 and 18, masses of local workers were turned away empty-handed from the Springs Labour Centre without explanation. Seshoka added that the union was ‘highly disturbed’ by the ‘monotonous irresponsible utterances’ made by Aurora. He demanded that the workers get paid. Liquidators have been given until August to “secure funding from Chinese company Shandong Gold Mining Company to purchase the by now heavily-looted mining assets. On Thursday, Solidarity’s Helping Hand charity-project visited the local Dutch Reformed Church in Strubenvale again to bring the struggling workers much-needed food hampers, http://bit.ly/ocuoUp
White mining-families turned into paupers by Zuma/Mandela-owned gold-mines’ refusing to pay their salaries:
After the local white gold-mining families were turned into destitute paupers because Aurora would not pay their salaries for two years, the ‘company’ finally gave up the ghost. Now the once so lucrative gold mines of Aurora are rapidly being stripped of all their valuables. Thousands of organised gangs of illegal miners, called 'zama-zamas' – many are very young boys forced to work for the gangs from as far afield as Mozambique, Lesotho and Zimbabwe -- descend on the sites to sift through the dust in their frantic search for gold: which increases more in value every day. The zama-zamas also regularly fall to their deaths while trying to climb into the 800-metre deep shaft to hack gold-carrying ore away.
Residents concerned for their children’s safety:
With fences surrounding the shaft stripped away, and private property signs long gone, residents in the area have reason to be concerned for the safety of their children who could easily hurt themselves in the debris or fall down the open shaft. Despite a milling of people at the site only four men were arrested by Springs police for 'possession of stolen scrap metal'.
http://www.looklocal.co.za/looklocal/content/en/springs/springs-news-general?oid=1216353&sn=Detail&pid=490321&Shaft-Six-turns-to-scrap
Fierce gunfights between illegal gold-miners: two more bodies discovered in Dersley, Springs
25 July 2011 - Police discovered the bodies of two murdered black males, neatly placed on the side of Orpiment Avenue, Dersley, early on Saturday morning.25 July 2011 Journalist Amanda van den Barg of the Springs Advertiser noted that the police are regularly finding the bodies of murdered people.It is believed these specific murdered males 'may have been illegal miners'. (zama-zamas). These two men died from various injuries, leading police to suspect they perished in some rock fall.They were then wrapped up and left on the side of the road. Rather than call police to the scene and alert them to possible mining sites, illegal miners are allegedly leaving the bodies in the open for police to find.
http://www.looklocal.co.za/looklocal/content/en/springs/springs-news-general?oid=4543218&sn=Detail&pid=490321&Two-bodies-discovered-in-Dersley
White Springs residents targetted by violent armed gangs: at shops, going to work, coming back from work…
8 Aug 2011 - Johan Beytell, chairman of the Casseldale Community Police Sub Forum (CPSF) was one of four Springs residents hijacked within two days. Beytell stopped at the Strubenvale Pick n Pay to pick up a few groceries and arrived at his Casseldale home at around 7:45pm last Tuesday. “I always check to see if I have been followed before pulling into the driveway and opening the gate, because this is where you are the most vulnerable,” he says.
Beytell pulled into the driveway and was walking back to the gate when a white VW Polo drove past his house and stopped a few metres away from the gate. Two well-dressed men got out of the car and approached the gate. “I froze as soon as I saw them coming, and when they realised I’d seen them, they started to run towards me,” he says.The Polo sped off and he could hear one of the two men cock a gun as they continued towards him. “I knew I was in trouble, but when you’re actually in the situation, you freeze,” says Beytell, reliving the experience. “They came through the gate, the gun pointed at me and ordered me to lie down.” The thug had the gun pointed at the back of his head while he searched Beytell, taking his money and cellphone. “They even took my handkerchiefs!” he exclaims. “I could see they were nervous, so I tried to stay calm and told them they could take whatever they wanted,” he says. Beytell’s wife and grandchild were in the house. While one of the hijackers held him up, the other reversed the car back down the driveway. Beytell’s wife noticed the car leaving the driveway, looked out the window and saw him lying on the ground. She screamed and terrified that the hijacker might shoot at her, Beytell ordered his wife to go back into the house, where she called the CPSF. Once the car had reached the road, the second man ordered Beytell to stay down and ran out of the yard. “I was convinced that they would try and shoot me,” he says, explaining how he got up and ran towards the gate just as the hijackers stalled the car. Beytell had a radio fitted in his car, in order to communicate with CPSF members from Casseldale as well as from other suburbs - making the situation worse. “CPSF patrollers went out immediately to try and find them, but unfortunately the hijackers could pick up where the patrollers were from the radio communication,” he says. He blames himself: Beytell “admits that despite being observant and extremely cautious when driving, he was "at that moment a soft target. I don’t believe they were following me; if they had, they would have hit me when I first pulled up to the house,” he claims -- believing that they were ‘simply driving around and saw an opportunity when they spotted him in the driveway, his gate still open’.
Elsa Grove, two other women in three attacks: Daggafontein, Eastvale, Dersley - Springs.
Aug 8 2011 Afrikaans resident Mrs Elsa Grove of Daggafontein, Springs was assaulted at her home before she got ready to leave for work on Wednesday morning. Mrs Grové had left the car in the road idling and went back to lock up the house when four men approached her.They punched and kicked her, pulling her jersey over her face as she screamed to her husband for help, before punching her again.Two armed black men went up to the house and assaulted her husband, demanding money and the couple’s cellphones. After a struggle, the thugs made their way to the car on the road.“They all climbed into my car and as they drove of, the man who had hit me and was now sitting in the passenger seat of my car, wound down the window and fired a shot at me,” says Grové, still shaky from the ordeal.“Police later found the bullet in my driveway,” she adds.The couple’s silver Honda Ballade was recovered an hour later in Selcourt. “Our neighbours were amazing, calling police and the car tracking company,” she says, grateful that they survived.Another woman, hijacked in Eastvale last Wednesday, is still shocked by the level of violence used on her by her attackers.“They were so rough and were really throwing me around,” she says.She was on her way home when a white Audi sped past her.“I thought somebody was in trouble; I never imagined that it was me,” she says.As she pulled into her driveway, the Audi reappeared. Two men got out of the car and flung her to the ground.They hit her on the back of the head, angry because she had fallen onto her handbag, and they were struggling to take it away from her. They then asked if there was anybody home and made her take them to the house.“Fortunately, I lock my German shepherd in the house and he was barking,” she says. The ordeal came to an abrupt end, with the hijackers rushing back to her car. Both cars then drove away.The woman’s car, a gift from her father, was recovered two days later.A fourth hijacking took place in Dersley last Tuesday morning. A young girl was forced out of her car in her driveway, the hijackers fleeing with her white Opel Corsa.According to police, hijackings have definitely increased in Springs:
http://www.saps.gov.za/crime_prevention/safety_tips/car_hijacking.
http://www.looklocal.co.za/looklocal/content/en/springs/springs-news-general?oid=4571227&sn=Detail&pid=490323&Hijackings-in-Springs-on-the-increase
Labels:
Gold-hunters wage vicious warfare in mining towns
Recently, the SA police confiscated millions of dollars'worth of illegally-panned gold-dust in an early-morning swoop on large numbers of warring, illegal gold-panners ('zama-zamas') in the disused Goldfields mining properties at Welkom, Free State. They confiscated a whopping 50kg of pure gold-dust. Who gets the benefits from all that confiscated gold-dust?
Local residents say the zama-zamas are repatriated to their home-countries such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho: but fresh gangs quickly arrive to take their places - usually within hours after the police-raids.
Thus these occasional raids against the violent tribal-gangs from Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe do not even make a dent in the soaring crime surrounding the besieged working-class Afrikaner families in this old mining town's ongoing ‘gold-panners warfare’. As soon as the cops leave with their 'confiscated gold-dust' , the gold-panners soon are back at work - and terrorising the entire gold-mining region with their vicious warfare and other criminal activities: such as the child-sex trade and other slavery-practices.
Police picture: These illegal golddust-sifters were arrested in a July 2011 police-swoop during which 50-kg of gold-dust was recovered. They were photographed while waiting to be arraigned at the Welkom Police holding-cells courtyard.
Warfare amongst illegal gold-panners of Welkom: police fails to protect Afrikaner families caught in the firing line
illegal gold-miners in organised campaigns inside the mine-shafts - but these gold-mining crime-syndicates fought back hard with booby traps using explosives and Chinese-issued AK47s, set to keep the police at bay when the mines were still operational. During these policing-operations in Welkom, sixty illegal gold-miners died in a fire which they had started themsevles to keep the police from invading the Harmony Gold mine in Welkom: http://mg.co.za/article/2009-06-02-more-than-60-illegal-miners-killed-at-sa-gold-mine' These zama-zamas even dig up our streets and gardens to get to the dust below...'
2011-06-06 WELKOM. – Police told Volksblad newspaper that the Velthuysen family was totally defenceless: the nine-year-old boy desperately tried to crawl underneath his bed to hide from his murderer – but was dragged out and killed, markings on his back showed. His nine-year-old slain sister’s body was on her bed in the same room; their 46-year-old mother’s blood-covered body was found in the main-bedroom of the family-home in the working-class traditionally Afrikaans suburb of Dagbreek, Welkom.Volksblad journalist Tom de Wet quoted SAPF capt Stephen Thakeng as saying that the organised-crime unit was ‘following all the forensic leads’ to try and find the murderers of the unarmed three-member family. The unnamed family had moved into the house only two months earlier and no-one in the neighbourhood knew them. A neighbour said he last saw the woman on Sunday-morning outside in the garden. He had noticed ‘nothing unusual’. A friend of the dead woman who stopped by on his motorbike at around 19:30 on Sunday, discovered the tragedy when he looked through a window after finding the house locked and silent. He reportedly ran into the street in fear and neighbours alerted the police after seeing the carnage inside. Police broke open the front door. One of the witnesses told Volksblad journalist Tom de Wet that the two children were not at school on Thursday.
http://www.volksblad.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/Ma-twee-kinders-vermoor-20110606
The ANC-regime has turned Welkom into a crime-swamp overrun by thousands of criminal gold-panning gangsters:
ANC-regime fails to intervene in illegal land-occupation of white-owned farm near Harrismith
Despite the fact that the white owner lodged his formal request for their removal well within the 72-hour maximum-time limit before a court-order is needed, local SAPS colonel Christopher Mophiring demanded a court-order. Volksblad noted on June 30 tha the family, who have a home in Qwa-Qwa, set up shacks and brought 20 heads of cattle to the farm and have refused to budge. Masiteng Petrus Sekonyela and his wife Mrs Masefefo Julia Khoete occupied the farm ‘because ANC youth league leader Julius Malema told them to,’ they told the news media. Malema said at the annual congress of the league that ‘land must be occupied without compensation’. They took him seriously. Agri-Free State executive Henk Vermeulen said it’s now a legal fact – (after the police deliberately delayed for 72 hours to evict them) – that the family could not be legally removed without a court order. “They have placed a caravan and a shack on the property and moved in.” He said the white owner, Petrus Weyers, was ‘not a member of their organisation but they would be willing to assist him with advice, and we are monitoring the situation’. He claims that it’s ‘very difficult for people who do not belong to an organised agricultural group to tackle such problems’. Local MP of the Democratic Alliance Athol Trollip said President Jacob Zuma must declare himself publicly about the issue of illegal land-occupations of privately-owned land – as a matter of urgency. “He must say whether this is ANC-policy. He must reject all those radical proposals by Malema. Zuma must indicate exactly which steps he will take with his administration to address the clear failures of his ‘land-reform’ projects.” http://www.landbou.com/nuus/nuus-artikel/plaasbesetting-polisie-tree-nie-opThe land-grabbing campaign in towns and countryside: 'the land should be shared among those who work it…’
- Deputy-min. Thulas Noresi, Rural Development, Land Reform Dept’s explanation for the recent military training of the National Rural Youth Service Corps specifically to ANC youth league members – who are given military weapons and –training: they are given military training to carry out ‘rural census’ surveys…’
New developments: lately, the ANC-regime's cops have been consistently refusing to remove illegal black squatters from commercial farms and city-properties within the legal 72-hour timeframe; deliberately delaying the landowners' requests so that they have to obtain court-orders after 72 hours. The regime's representatives also refuse to detain criminal cops who attack white smallholders in the Sasolburg region; and allowed a black-racist cop out on a mere R2,000 bail – after he killed Afrikaner resident Jeanet Odendaal execution-style in Welkom. The authorities also refused to help legal white land-owners evict illegal squatters at two organised invasions of white-owned land: outside Harrismith (occupied by Qwa-Qwa residnets) and 750 privately-owned plots in a Welkom suburb. The police deliberately delayed going to the two properties to evict the illegal, well-organised squatters. Now the white property owners are facing tens of thousands of Rands in court-costs to get these people off their land. Well-informed political analysts believe that these were 'test-cases' - and that full-scale land-invasions of all privately-owned properties in towns and the countryside are being planned. Deputy-agriculture minister Pieter Mulder, July 1 2011: "White farmers must safeguard themselves against attacks and landgrabbing by the ANC youth league...' On July 1 2011, the Deputy-Agriculture Minister Pieter Mulder warned white farmers to ‘safeguard themselves against attacks and landgrabbing by the ANC Youth League..’. http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Safeguard-yourselves-farmers-told-20110619
Black-racist attacks against whites have soared since Jan 2011
Since January 1 2011, at least 990 black-racist attacks have already been logged against whites – and the majority of these victims were Afrikaners and Boers.
http://www.farmitracker.com
By comparison, 170 ‘xenophobic’ attacks were logged in this same time period against the 11-m black-African refugees. All but one of those attacks were carried out by black-racist South Africans. There was only one exception: the recent murder of a Malawian man, for which a young Boer, Robert Louw van Tonder, now is being hunted down with a large pack of heavily-armed reactionary cops – a manhunt which is accompanied by a public demonisation campaign in the pro-ANC Afrikaans news media. It’s a political manhunt: there is widespread fear in the Boer community that this young man – a grandson of Boer State Party founder Robert Spiller van Tonder -- will not survive the manhunt to even get his day in a law-court…. By comparison, the authorities seem to completely condone the hundreds of monthly attacks against ‘whites’ – it is seen that for instance, the large organised gang of black police-officers who actively participated abnd were arrested for armed gang-attacks against white smallholders in the Sasolburg region, were released without charges, and back at their jobs – noted local Magistrate C J Musi recently. http://www.farmitracker.com
2011-07-04 Cape Town parliament. The ANC ‘s new law which would give total control to higher-education minister Blade Nzimande over all the higher-education colleges, is expected to be approved in parliament soon – even though ominously, the Constitution has to be changed to do it. Only one province, the Western Cape, opposes the ANC plans to take the higher-education portfolio away from the provinces. (source: SA journalist Liesl Peyper). Nzimande recently reminded MPs in his budget-speech that he was determined to centralise all the tertiary-education institutions: at the moment, control is shared between the national- and provincial authorities. The Constitution would have to be changed to allow the control of tertiary education from provincial- to State-level. Nzimande claims that it ‘makes sense’ to centralise all the tertiary colleges and adult-education systems under his centralised control. The plans were vehemently opposed by Democratic-Alliance MP Dr Wilmot James. He said the centralising of control would undermine the present provincial system. In the proposed law, a clause is included which would change Portion A, Section 4 of the Constitution – which stipulates that ‘education at all levels except tertiary education would be an equal concurrent of both the national and provincial authorities.’ Only once province opposes the proposed change to the Constitution: the DA-run Western Cape. http://bit.ly/lLlGM9
Dr Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch: “My own advice to Afrikaaners is to keep your weapons loaded and hidden and your powder dry and don’t respond to violent provocations like those made by Malema. Greg’
