AfriForum gives new mining bill red light: ‘It spells environmental destruction and corruption’

AfriForum warns that the Mineral Resources Development Amendment Bill (2025) will entrench environmental destruction and corruption by formalising destructive illegal mining under the banner of economic inclusion. In its comments submitted yesterday, the organisation says that the Bill’s vague definitions, weak enforcement provisions and unproven transformation clauses risk turning an already unmanageable crisis into legalised anarchy.

South Africa is battling a wave of destructive illegal mining, with operators stripping riverbanks, poisoning waterways with arsenic and mercury, and fuelling crime in communities. AfriForum says the Bill effectively legalises these activities through vague terms such as “customary mining activities” and “rudimentary, non-mechanised methods” in its definition of “artisanal mining”. Combined with the plan to issue permits for areas of only 1,5 hectares and for periods under two years, it amounts to a blank cheque for environmental harm.

AfriForum’s submission points out that the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) already fails to enforce environmental regulations against large-scale polluters. Its cadastral system remains dysfunctional, leading to overlapping mining rights, land disputes, and licensing delays. Adding hundreds or thousands of new artisanal permits would only deepen this chaos.

“The illegal mining crisis cannot be solved by licensing it. Criminal syndicates are entrenched in these activities. Formalising now, without a proper administrative backbone, safeguards, and enforcement capacity in place, is not only reckless, but also a direct threat to water security, agriculture and biodiversity. It also opens another door to corruption,” says Marais de Vaal, Advisor for Environmental Affairs at AfriForum.

The organisation also objects to the Bill’s unproven Black Economic Empowerment provisions, which it says will not deliver genuine transformation to uplift ordinary South Africans.

Signing the Bill into law before proven enforcement capacity and credible environmental oversight exist will undermine its stated intent. AfriForum calls on parliament and the DMRE to withdraw and amend these provisions in the interest of communities that deserve a mining framework that protects natural resources, not one that licenses lawless exploitation.