ANC, EFF boycott crime scene visit: "Eeeeuuuuwwww - who cares about illegal mining, sickening pollution, when it might muddy my Jimmy Choos?"

SA's shadow mining minister James Lorimer had his hopes of a breakthrough in the war against organised mining criminals dashed when ANC and EFF members of Parliament's task force refused to visit an illegally-worked open pit coal mine. This was the second site scheduled for observation during Saturday's visit to Emalahleni (Witbank), unusual in that it avoided typical Potemkin-village staging by bureaucrats. But as Lorimer explains in this podcast, the risk of getting their shoes muddied apparently took precedence for the R95k a month taxpayer-funded ANC and EFF deployees. In this interview with Alec Hogg of BizNews, the DA veteran unpacks how illegal mining has become big business in SA's coal mining epicentre with criminal syndicates leasing heavy duty diggers and dump trucks to illegally strip-mine hundreds of tons of coal sold wholesale into the system at massive profits. Lorimer explains how this crime is facilitated through deliberately blind eyes of those paid to protect society against such abuse. Including, it appears, some Parliamentarians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices