{"id":42185,"date":"2026-08-11T17:45:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T15:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=42185"},"modified":"2026-08-11T17:45:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T15:45:03","slug":"sa-mine-dump-collapse-kills-14-illegal-miners","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-mine-dump-collapse-kills-14-illegal-miners\/","title":{"rendered":"SA mine dump collapse kills 14 illegal miners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At least 14 suspected illegal miners were killed and \u200ceight injured when a mine dump collapsed in South Africa&#8217;s (SA) North West province on Monday night, police said.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Search and rescue operations were under way for an unknown number of people \u2060who may still be trapped at the site near Rustenburg, Provincial Police Commissioner Arthur Peter Adams said.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The collapse occurred as the miners were digging for platinum group metals at a disused dump on a private company&#8217;s site, Adams said.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The injured miners are from the Southern African country of \u200cLesotho, \u2060while the nationality of those killed has yet to be confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Illegal mining has plagued SA for decades, ranging from small-scale theft to operations run by \u2060organised criminal networks.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Undocumented miners often enter abandoned commercial mines to extract remaining deposits, sometimes under the control of \u2060violent gangs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Illegal mining costs the government and mining industry hundreds of millions of dollars each \u2060year in lost sales, taxes and royalties.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":42186,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-42185","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"At least 14 dead as mine dump collapses near Rustenburg in South Africa","published_date":"2026-08-11 17:43:43","news_description":"At least 14 dead as mine dump collapses near Rustenburg in South Africa","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/42185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/42185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42187,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/42185\/revisions\/42187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=42185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}