What was planned as a peaceful protest in Kagiso, Krugersdorp ended in chaos with at least one person killed and scores arrested. Mogale City mayor Tyrone Gray spoke to Krugersdorp News about the situation on the ground.

At least one person was shot and killed while 15 others were arrested.

Gray explains that the community originally organised a peaceful protest; however, once they tried to engage with the zama zamas, they retaliated.

He says the community went to the zama zama camp in Soul City, which is also colloquially referred to as Gold City, and the zama zamas fired shots at the community. The community then took matters into their own hands.

“Zama zamas are heavily armed. Some are merely miners, but others are malicious forces,” he says.

“We have apprehended about 15 [people]. I intervened so that there are no casualties. Unfortunately, it was reported that there was a death at the intersection lower down. At this stage we cannot confirm whether it is a zama zama; however, the dress does indicate that.”

He says what is happening today has two aspects – firstly, the community is frustrated and fed up with problems that have increasing over a number of decades. He also believes what is taking place is reactionary in terms of what happened at West Village recently.

He is of the opinion that the recent rape and robbery of a film crew made the community realise that they do not want such incidents to happen there and they took matters into their own hands.

He warned that the community should not take matters into their own hands.

“Going forward they must rather feed the intelligence through to the relative people who are adequately trained and will then do the operation.”

Gray says the police and community should be working together.

One of the unintentional consequences of today’s shutdown were that the municipality was unable to take out their TLB’s because the contractor did not want their assets to be harmed in any way.

He says they welcome the community bolstering their own security but implore them to do it in an intelligent, coordinative, and collaborative matter.

“The community is meant to inform and then we will utilise that information to handle the operations on our own because the police are adequately trained, and we want to ensure that there is no damage to infrastructure but also that the community is protected and kept safe in the operations.”

When the newspaper left the scene, the protest was still ongoing with police out in full force. Residents are warned to avoid the area around Kagiso as well as surrounding roads close-by.

Social media has been abuzz with reports about the chaotic scenes. One post reads “This forms part of their protest over the failure of officials to close unused mines and escalating crime”.

#Kagiso community members who have gathered in protest against Zama Zama’s say police are agitating them instead of controlling the crowd- most of which are learners from the area pic.twitter.com/IaPBlCp0iO

— Kgaugelo| News Girl (@KgaugeloKgaphol) August 4, 2022

The Kagiso community has refused to open the main reef road as they continue with the shutdown . Community leaders say they will be marching to the nearby mine shafts where #ZamaZamas are expected to be. They say @SAPoliceService are aware. @eNCA pic.twitter.com/04H3LpXW8u

— Nqobile Madlala (@NqobileMadlala_) August 4, 2022