The Free State town that drowned in sludge after 12 years of warnings

Jagersfontein is a small town in the Free State that sprang up during the diamond rush of the 1870s. In the early hours of Sunday 11 September tragedy struck when a slimes dam wall collapsed near the open-pit diamond mine, causing a mudslide and flooding.

At least one person died and hundreds were displaced. More than 500 animals were rescued; some had to be euthanised.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-09-13-owners-of-free-state-diamond-mine-were-warned-to-cease-operations-two-years-ago/

The Charlesville area was hardest hit. Houses, personal belongings and livestock were washed away; cellphone towers, roads, powerlines and water supplies damaged.

Kopanong Mayor Xolani Tseletsele said he had been raising concerns about this particular dam, which is a few metres away from the community, for the past 12 years.

Dr Imtiaz Sooliman of relief organisation Gift of the Givers has called for donations of bottled water, blankets and mattresses, as well as antibiotics and feed for sheep.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-09-12-in-photos-the-destruction-of-the-jagersfontein-mine-dam-wall-collapse/

“A local church has opened its doors for shelter and accommodation,” said Sooliman. “Immediate requirements include bottled water, bulk food for cooking, blankets, mattresses, clothing, hygiene items, sanitary pads and diapers. Fodder for sheep will also be required. Gift of the Givers teams are packing supplies at Bethlehem, Graaff-Reinet, Gqeberha and Cape Town.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the site on Monday, followed by Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe on Tuesday.

Mantashe said a 2007 high court judgment that left the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) without jurisdiction over tailings dams was a dangerous mistake.

“It deprived this company and this mine of the opportunity to have regular mining inspectors visiting it,” he said. “To me, it confirms that this cannot be an operation that is given a different definition. It is a mining operation and therefore the DMRE must take full responsibility for the operations. That judgment, to me, was a mistake and it should be corrected.”

Mantashe was referring to the Free State High Court ruling in the matter of De Beers versus Ataqua Mining and the DMRE. The case dealt with the question of whether the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002 deprived De Beers of ownership of minerals in tailings dumps, and if the DMRE had authority to grant prospecting or mining rights in pre-2002 dumps.

The collapsed dam (where mining byproducts are stored) is adjacent to the former diamond mine, shut in the 1970s by De Beers. The dam is now classified as a processing facility and is owned by Jagersfontein Developments (JD), a unit of the Dubai-based Stargems Group.

Tailings dumps or slimes dams often contain minerals that can be extracted, extending the economic lifespan of a mining operation.

De Beers won the 2007 court case, and the court held that tailings dumps are movables and thus ownership belongs to those who removed the minerals as they had occurred naturally in or on the earth, and the act could not control tailings dumps created before it was passed in 2002.

Mantashe said the Free State had many tailings dams and to allow jurisdiction of them to fall under the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), which happened after the judgment, was “a risk”.

JD told Daily Maverick Sonop Superkolong Consortium was the successful bidder for  Jagersfontein diamond mine when De Beers put it out to tender in 2010. Superkolong exited the transaction soon after, and Johann Rupert’s Reinet Investments took control. Stargems acquired Reinet’s shareholding in Jagersfontein in April 2022.

Warnings over many years

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