Macua slams Barberton illegal miners’ arrests as performative justice

By Akani Nkuna

The Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) has played down the recent arrests of over 400 illegal miners at the Sheba Mine in Barberton as performative justice, saying that the real masterminds were left to roam free whilst the focus iwas on poor Black workers trying to make a living for themselves.

 MACUA spokesperson Tholakele Thabane said on Tuesday that the arrests captured the real picture of the ongoing failure by the South African law enforcement agencies to confront the real architecture of illegal mining.

“Over 400 arrests have taken place this last week alone. As has become the norm, those arrested are overwhelmingly poor Black workers, many of them migrants, forced into informal mining by economic desperation and exclusion from the formal economy,” he said.

“These arrests are presented as victories, with police parading mining tools, shovels and makeshift explosives as evidence of ‘progress’ in