South Africa's tailings dam crisis has escalated, with only a handful registered under law and a regulatory system exposed as dangerously inadequate. Recent findings call for urgent reform and community involvement to avert potential disasters that could devastate lives and ecosystems.

A recent study by the CSOs Tailings Working Group found that only 29 tailings dams are registered in terms of the law. That is out of approximately 337 tailings dams that the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) had in its database as at 2023.

The study also noted that about 180 were too small in scale to qualify as "dams with a safety risk" and therefore were not required to register. Interestingly — or to add salt to the injury — the department responsible for the dam register stated upfront that it does not know how many tailings dams there are in South Africa.

Furthermore, this must not be read to mean that 29 companies complied — far from it, as a compliant company would have registered all of its dams under its care and maintenance. Thus, when we look at the table, it could be assumed that only 25 companies complied. The Department of Water and Sanitation was given the report to comment on two months ago, but chose not to reply.

So, when the tailings facility failed at the Samancor Chrome disaster in Brits in August 2025, we were saddened but not surprised. For various reasons, this mine, amongst hundreds of others, was not even on the map. It was not registered, and at this stage has not even paid for this failure to register.

We wrote in our media release that the last-updated DWS dams register (July 2025) does not include this tailings facility as a registered facility, which must be remedied. In addition, we called on the authorities to "establish a public, independent inquiry into the structural integrity of the Dikwena facility, with a clear timeline for reporting." They must also, we said, investigate as soon as possible and release the latest safety audits and dam stability records for this facility to the public.

We believe that regulating tailings dams — and all dams — requires beefed-up resources and a chain of command that will put into place a system of transparency and accountability from the ground level right up through municipalities, provincial and departmental approval. The parliamentary oversight committees on water and sanitation have been good.

"Govt to employ 10,000 inspectors: strengthening enforcement through an expanded inspectorate."

On the ground, we have serious deficits, and these must be addressed, as indicated in the "Please Sir" study. The government's promised employment of 10,000 new labour inspectors was a welcome development, but the study asked whether the only four permanent inspectors overseeing more than 5,700 registered dams, including toxic tailings facilities, could get some of that capacity too. Hence the Dickensian "Please Sir, may we have some…?"

What is undeniable is that we have a regulatory weakness, and a shortage of inspectors at that. It would appear that water regulation is weaker than other aspects of environmental regulation.

Source: https://iol.co.za/news/opinion/2026-10-07-south-africas-tailings-dams-a-regulatory-nightmare-with-deadly-consequences/