Parliament gets Natjoints briefing on coordinated response to illegal mining

Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Mineral and Petroleum Resources received a briefing from the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (Natjoints) on 24 February 2026 on the prevention and combating of crimes associated with illicit mining, with ministers in attendance, according to parliamentary records.

Natjoints brings together the police, State Security Agency, defence force and other agencies to coordinate operations against organised crime, and its mining-specific work centres on Operation Vala Umgodi, the strategy of closing off access to disused and abandoned mine shafts to force illegal miners, commonly known as zama zamas, out of underground workings. The police have said they are also running multi-disciplinary task teams with the National Prosecuting Authority targeting the leadership, financing and firearms supply chains behind illegal mining syndicates, rather than only the miners found underground. The department has also linked its illegal mining response to the wider critical minerals strategy, arguing that faster, more transparent licensing through the new cadastre would reduce the incentive for prospectors and small operators to work outside the legal system altogether.

Why Parliament is treating this as policy, not just crime

Illegal mining has moved from a law-and-order problem to a mineral-policy one because so much of it happens on ground covered by valid rights holders, disused mines that were never properly rehabilitated, or land where the formalisation of small-scale and artisanal mining has stalled. The 2025 MPRDA amendment bill explicitly included measures aimed at reducing illegal mining and giving legal structure to artisanal operators, on the premise that clearer legal pathways for small-scale miners reduce the pool of people pushed into illegal activity.

Committee oversight of the Natjoints response also reflects political pressure following a string of high-profile illegal mining incidents, including fatal confrontations, that have kept the issue high on Parliament's agenda through 2026.

What happens next

The briefing fed into continuing parliamentary scrutiny of the government's coordinated response, including subsequent oversight visits to affected provinces and further committee engagements on the pace of formalising artisanal mining as an alternative to enforcement-only approaches, and on whether police and department resources match the scale of the problem MPs were told about.

Sources

• Parliamentary Monitoring Group: Prevention and combating of crimes associated with illicit mining: Update by Natjoints; with Ministers, 24 Feb 2026
• Gauteng Democratic Alliance: Illegal mining intensifies under Lesufi's government, with 2,533 operations recorded over four years, 20 Jul 2026

Photo: A South African mining operation; illegal mining often takes place at disused sites like this. NJR ZA, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.