According to reports by South Africa’s energy department on Friday, June 23, a methane gas explosion that happened in a disused South African mine which killed not less than 31 people last month is assumed to have come from neighbouring Lesotho.
Recall that the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, DMRE, had announced late Thursday night that South Africa was looking in to the deaths, which had happened in a ventilation shaft in the shuttered Virginia mine in Free State province.
The DMRE had additionally revealed that an investigation into the unfortunate incident (with the help of Harmony Gold, the previous owner of the mine which stopped operations in the 1990s) had determined that the high methane levels in the ventilation shaft had been the cause of the explosion.
Due to this reason, sending out a search team to the ventilation shaft would be disastrous. Several safer options are being considered, however, to hastily deal with this crisis.
Illegal mining is no new occurrence in South Africa’s mining industry as it has been robbing the sector of several billions of rand through either its organised crime and its small time pilfering.
