Only a fence and pane of glass separate young lives from a battlefield outside.
Residents in a quiet street behind the factories in Robertville are living in the grips of fear and panic. For roughly a month and a half, gunshots have been ringing in the air of their suburb as gangs of illegal miners wage a bloody conflict on their doorsteps. Caught in the crossfire of a disagreement they have no part in, families with young lives are barricaded in their homes, clinging to their loved ones.
The situation reached brutal proportions when a man was killed in their street while many were returning from work. At roughly 18:00 on Wednesday, November 10 rival zama zamas exchanged gunfire from the openings in the field along Eitemal Avenue. After sustaining a gunshot wound, one man ran from his would-be killers, attempted to jump a resident’s wall and after failing, collapsed at the end of the street where residents claim he was bricked to death.
With only one way in and one way out, residents of Eitemal Avenue and Uys Krige Street feel trapped by the regular presence of violence and criminality. They claim their domestic workers have been mugged, and hijacking attempts have been made at the corner of Nadine Street and Eitemal Avenue. “We are afraid to even go to the shops or come home from work,” said one resident, all of whom are too afraid to be named.
For weeks before the incident, residents had been in constant communication with Florida Police in an attempt to receive adequate protection. The residents have requested a constant police presence but say their cries are not being taken seriously. Florida Police arranged a Nyala for what residents say was one night but station commander, Colonel Amos Tsotetsi said he was liaising with Public Order Police to post a vehicle permanently in the street.
Additionally, meetings between police, ward governance and the Department of Mineral Resources are scheduled for later in the month but the residents want more urgent solutions. “We have given the police vehicle registrations, informed them of the times activity is highest, and told them where all the spotters sit,” said a resident of their extensive documenting of the movements made in their street by suspected illegal miners.
The field across from Eitemal Avenue has several open holes that the illegal miners use to access the underground caverns they operate in, the largest being just metres away from the driveways of the street. The residents describe how, like clockwork, groups of men are dropped off and collected by various vehicles which ferry the men as they disappear and reappear from the holes in the field.
The latest round of shooting left holes in a resident’s wall but even before then parents did not allow their children to play in the yard anymore. Families now share their meals in bedrooms away from the front-facing windows and when the gunshots go off, parents mask the danger by turning scrambles for cover into fort-building games for the children not old enough to understand the traumatic events.
Illegal miners are relentless and while these rudimentary shaft access points have been closed, they are quickly reopened, accompanied by threats of violence. One solution proposed was to pave the entire field but residents would settle for concreting the holes and fencing off the privately owned field. Enraged, desperate and not equipped to fight fire with fire, the residents of Eitemal Avenue are begging for assistance and the return of peace to their homes.
