Poisoned waters — Illegal mining threatens the Greater Kruger ecosystem

For weeks at a time, we were deployed in two-man teams, deep inside the Greater Kruger with nothing but that which fitted into a worn SADF rucksack.

No running water. No backup. We had one rifle between the two of us. Each of us was issued with two camo shirts, one pair of camo pants. We slept in bomas which we built ourselves from acacia and knob thorn. The thorns, in theory, kept out the dangerous animals. We bathed in rivers once every 10 days – if we were lucky – despite crocodiles and hippos. We did 10–15km foot patrols each day, sun or rain. Lions, leopards, elephants and buffalo moved around our hidden bomas day and night. If we left the safety of our shelter, we dared not do so without a rifle.

That kind of exposure changes you.

My work as a ranger has taken me across the waters, to places people still call “untouched”. But there is no such thing anymore. Even on remote desert islands where I was the only human inhabitant, plastic pollution had already arrived.

I worked on global conservation campaigns, including the fight to save the vaquita marina in Mexico – the most endangered marine mammal on Earth. Our operation was called milagro: “miracle”. There were only seven of the animals left. Illegal gillnets were killing them as bycatch. Our team faced violent confrontations at sea, sometimes outnumbered by fleets of cartel-backed poachers. We knew we were fighting a nearly impossible battle. Even survival would likely come too late; severe damage to the vaquita’s genetic diversity was already done. The takeaway from that experience was that we, as humans, waited too late to interfere.

Back in South Africa, I worked on Big Five reserves where snaring had become routine. On the worst-affected reserves, every single day we removed wire snares from carcasses. For every 60 taken out, more appeared elsewhere. It felt like a low-intensity wildlife war. Eventually, even the smell of rotting animals stopped registering. I realised one day – handling a decomposing carcass with bare hands – that I had become completely desensitised to this type of crime.

Rhino poaching is rife.

My first rhino necropsy left me in tears. I made a promise there and then that we would avenge the beautiful animal. But even to that, I became accustomed. Ten months later, I stood over a poached rhino cow with her unborn calf inside her. The stench was so intense that our photographer was unable to capture the required investigative images. We removed the calf from the womb of the cow and held it up for the tourists. They were horrified. I barely blinked. I had become accustomed to the awfulness of it all – so quickly.

In the Eastern Cape, I worked against abalone poaching syndicates and encountered a different kind of lawlessness: industrial-scale, organised crime operating in plain sight. Syndicates were active minutes into every shift and stayed active long after we clocked off. Our teams operated outnumbered, 24/7 – at land and on sea. We knew every player. We watched them work daily. At night they appeared like a swarm of ants, across the peripherals of our thermals. The law was toothless. Arrests mostly hit the bottom rung, and replacements arrived immediately.

I have been part of some of the hardest conservation battles on land and at sea. But none now compares to what is unfolding quietly upstream from the Kruger.

Zama zamas targeting river systems

Driven frantically by a steadily rising gold price, illegal gold miners, known as zama zamas, are targeting the river systems that feed into the Greater Kruger Park. What happens at the source does not stay there. The affected rivers merge into the Olifants, which exits the Kruger, flows into the Massignir Dam in Mozambique, before emptying into the Indian Ocean. The effects are far reaching and have an international impact.

I understood the impact fully only after returning to Pilgrim’s Rest for the first time in several years.

From the moment I arrived, the signs were obvious to someone who specialises in environmental crime. Syndicates everywhere. Patterns unmistakable. Law enforcement has lost control. Dozens of illegal miners walk openly along the main road, headlamps still on. Dozens of mining pits sit less than 100 metres from tourist areas. Open for all to see. Massive dongas – deep enough to swallow a car – within metres of the tar road. The emotion among the locals is tangible. While a few are in denial or benefit from the miners, the majority have either left or are in dire straits.

This is not a hidden crime. It is a tolerated crime. On clear display.

Illegal and unregulated gold mining relies on cheap extraction methods: mercury, cyanide, arsenic. Soil is excavated and hauled to processing sites placed deliberately next to rivers because mining needs water. Cyanide and mercury are added to the water to process the gold. But even long after the materials are discarded, as water flows through already processed material, it becomes acidic. The lower the pH, the more heavy metals are stripped from the earth and flushed away with the water. This toxic mix drains straight into rivers, streams, aquifers and groundwater.

There is no environmental control. No safety. No remediation.

In Pilgrim’s Rest, police vehicles are regularly seen parked within 50 metres of active illegal gold mining sites. Drone footage reviewed by investigators allegedly shows officers accepting bribes. Locals say it openly. Even the miners admit they are being “taxed” by police.

Every illegal gold processing site I walked on shares one feature: direct access to a river. And every one of these rivers must come together at a confluence with the Blyde.

‘Site-seeing’ in Pilgrim’s Rest

I arrange to meet up with a local mining security expert – an occupation that has become increasingly dangerous. He agrees to take me on an escorted “site-seeing” tour.

We move in a three-vehicle armed convoy through informal settlements on the outskirts of Pigrim’s Rest, where zama zamas walk openly along the dirt roads. At the end of a mountain pass, we step unannounced onto a massive, live, illegal gold-processing site. There must be dozens of cyanide ponds and dozens of pendukas. The miners are visibly tense. And even though we try to pretend otherwise, so are we. A rear guard takes position on a koppie with a rifle while two of us walk down the hill, towards one of many sets of pendukas and cyanide ponds. From my peripherals, I notice several blanket-wearing Basothos, some positioned on the high points and koppies. They are without a doubt armed with rifles. We are there without invitation, completely unannounced. And our presence is starting to create a massive stir. The site is massive. We break the ice through some light banter with the miners. Some of the zamas start to relax a bit more. I film non-stop with my cellphone while interviewing a few of the zamas. Ninety-nine percent are of foreign descent. I manage to find only one South African among at least 50 of them. He acknowledges that this is an industry run by foreigners. The atmosphere remains tangibly tense.

Drone footage later revealed more than a dozen cyanide ponds surrounding the site – less than three kilometres from the local police station. The river that supplies the water to the cyanide ponds runs straight into the Blyde River, less than a kilometre away.

Fifteen minutes later, we withdraw to safety. But the lesson is clear: reports are not exaggerated. This is organised crime operating in plain sight, less than 3km from the police station. This is just one site. There are many more.

On my visits to Pilgrim’s Rest, I have personally watched heavy metals and poisons enter the Blyde River. I have seen 20kg bags of confiscated sodium cyanide. Now the damage is starting to register downstream. Rising arsenic levels are appearing in high-quality water tests commissioned by farmers supplying premium export markets.

A R7-billion-a-year agricultural export sector – supporting 100,000–150,000 jobs – and a R40-billion-a-year tourism economy depend on clean water from this system. Meanwhile, sediment from illegal mining is rapidly filling the Blyde Dam, reducing capacity at an alarming rate – a well-documented consequence of unregulated gold mining.

Interdepartmental failure

Government response comes too late. Intervention only follows once legal thresholds are breached. By then, the damage is irreversible. Export markets will withdraw quietly. Buyers disappear overnight. Jobs vanish.

This is an interdepartmental failure involving the Department of Water and Sanitation, Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Department of Agriculture, Department of Home Affairs and Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.

Section 24 of South Africa’s Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to an environment that supports health and wellbeing – and places a duty on the government to prevent pollution. That duty is being visibly breached in the Blyde Catchment. International tourists are noticing. So are overseas produce buyers.

Rural communities suffer first. They drink from rivers. They eat the fish. In heavily affected stretches, fish species have already stopped reproducing. Communities irrigate crops and draw water from shallow wells, without access to laboratories or continuous testing. Mercury, cyanide and arsenic do not disappear. They accumulate. The health consequences – especially reproductive damage – can last generations.

And the risk does not end there.

The Olifants River, which sustains Kruger National Park, depends heavily on the Blyde as a major tributary. Hundreds of millions of rands are spent protecting wildlife – while the water sustaining it is left exposed.

Illegal mining is not just poisoning rivers.

It is undermining conservation, collapsing economies, fuelling violent crime and sacrificing entire ecosystems – quietly, upstream, in plain sight.

At the centre of the crisis is uncontrolled immigration tied to organised crime. Of the miners interviewed, 98% were foreign nationals from Lesotho, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Local experts confirm syndicates are largely foreign-controlled. Basotho groups act as armed enforcers, while others handle digging, transport and engineering.

Solutions

As we monitored an access road outside Pilgrim’s Rest, an elderly local woman approached us barefoot in the rain. She thanked us and asked a simple question: “What will stop them from destroying our town?” The syndicates, the weapons, the corruption – all felt overwhelming to her.

She is not wrong.

A new initiative, the Blyde River Task Force, aims to bring together aquatic scientists, conservationists, private security specialists, advocates, policymakers and law enforcement. Its challenges are clear: securing vital government support, funding, and – critically – a real-time water-testing system capable of triggering action before irreversible damage occurs.

Failure is not an option. The cost is simply too high.

As South Africans, we are resourceful. We were pioneers in rhino conservation.

Increasingly there are some key players in the government who are starting to signal that they are ready to address these issues. But the reality is that we are out of the starting blocks extremely late. We still have a chance to turn this situation around, but we must act now. DM