A recent study by the CSOs Tailings Working Group found that only 29 tailings dams are registered in terms of the law. This is out of a number as at 2023, the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) had approximately 337 tailings dams in its database.
They also noted that about 180 were too small in scale to qualify as “dams with a safety risk” and therefore were not registered. Interestingly, or to add salt to injury, the dam register department stated upfront that they do 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 their 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 were given the report to comment 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.
Table 1: List of Dams by Town and Province
| Name Of Dam | Town Nearest | Province |
| Premier Mine No.7 Slimes Dam | Cullinan | MP |
| Arnot Wet Ash Dam | Hendrina | MP |
| Fedmis Gypsum Dam A | Phalaborwa | LP |
| Fedmis Gypsum Dam B | Phalaborwa | LP |
| Main Return Water Tailings Dam | Phalaborwa | LP |
| Fine Ash Dam5 Slimes Dam | Embalenhle | MP |
| Daggafontein Tailings Dam | Springs | GT |
| Brakpan Tailings Dam | Tsakane | GT |
| Dnc No.7 Mine Slurry Dam No.3 | Dannhauser | KN |
| Dnc No.7 Mine Slurry Dam No.4 | Dannhauser | KN |
| West Complex Storm Water Dam | Orkney | FS |
| Impala Tfs No.4 Dam | Rustenburg | NW |
| Kareerand Tailings Dam | Stilfontein | NW |
| Slimes Dam Module 1 | Emalahleni | MP |
| Slimes Dam Module 2 | Emalahleni | MP |
| Booysendal Platinum Mine Tailings | Steelpoort | MP |
| Residue Dam 3 | Vredenburg | WC |
| Fine Ash Dam4 Slimes Dam | Embalenhle | MP |
| Sezela Clean Water Recovery Plant Dam | Pennington | KN |
| Cisa Tailings Dam 4 | Newcastle | KN |
| Fine Ash Dam 6 | Embalenhle | MP |
| Jan Pad Dam | Springbok | NC |
| Grootvlei Ash Dam | Balfour | MP |
| Duvha Ash Dam | Emalahleni | MP |
| Bird Park Dam | Grootvlei | MP |
| Camden Power Station Main Ash Dam | Ermelo | FS |
| Ftsf Dam | Jagersfontein | FS |
| Dam 10 | Jagersfontein | FS |
| Hendrina Ash Dam 345 | Pullens Hope | MP |
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 for 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 now or as soon as possible: release the latest safety audits and dam stability records for this facility to be made public.
Regulatory Weakness and Inspector Shortages
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 that places 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 Expanded Inspectorate.”
On the ground, we have serious deficits, and these must be addressed as indicated in the “Please Sir” study. We believed that the promised employment by the government would be 10,000 new labour inspectors — a welcome development — but it asked if the only four permanent inspectors overseeing over 5,700 registered dams, including toxic tailings facilities, could get some. 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.
Sewage spills are affecting millions of people across rivers, oceans, dams, streets, and residential areas. The situation is dire: 56% of South Africa’s 1,150 wastewater treatment plants are in poor or critical condition, and 75% of 910 municipal wastewater treatment works failed to meet even 50% compliance with minimum effluent standards last year, according to a Daily Maverick investigation:
In 2022, we learnt that the deficits are systemic and have existed for a long time. Ferial Adam, writing in a follow up article argued that citizen action can pressure authorities through media exposure, protests, and independent water testing. She pointed out that the “Blue Scorpions,” the water enforcement unit, has fewer than 30 inspectors, compared to over 3,000 “Green Scorpions” for environmental crimes. This gap suggests water offences aren’t treated as serious crimes, so polluters face few deterrents. Stronger enforcement and tougher penalties are essential to end impunity. Citizen action is key to saving South Africa’s failing water and sanitation systems.
Furthermore, a GroundUp report on the state of our dams, based on 2024 standing committee findings, added:
- The DWS is severely understaffed, with only four permanent inspectors overseeing over 5,700 registered dams.
- This has created a massive backlog of unprocessed safety reports: 474 in November 2022, rising to 518. Clearing it is expected to cost about R7.1 million.
- Overall compliance with mandatory safety reports is only 33%. Municipalities are worst at 24%, and even the DWS manages only 41% for its own dams. These warn of a serious danger ahead.
The report didn’t cover tailings and mine waste, which I’ll address below.
The state can find thousands of inspectors for labour compliance but not a dozen for infrastructure that could poison or drown entire communities.
The report also notes that regulating tailings dams is difficult for various reasons. But it must be remedied holistically by making it simple for citizens to understand and allowing officers to enforce the law.
The Community Outsider
It is our unashamed advocacy for more rights for all inhabitants, particularly those living around mining and extractive projects. Mining-impacted and affected communities suffer because of the asymmetries of power — corporations the powerful, and communities the step-child of our democracy. We do not have easy remedy to regulatory bodies, and the use of grievance mechanisms in corporations and sector-wide is complex and ineffective. The Mine Health and Safety Council, despite talking of the impacts of mining on communities, was not created by nor for us. The tripartite structure does not include mine-impacted communities and thus further weakens our collective efforts to address mine waste and tailings. What is clear is that when a dam bursts it does not ask: are you covered by legislation or excluded. It is indiscriminate in its destruction. When it happens it does not ask if you are covered by the MHSC or not. It is not a question of if, but when such a disaster will occur.
Tailings are governed by at least six overlapping instruments — the Water Act, Minerals Act, Mine Health and Safety Act, SABS Code of Practice, DME Guideline, and the 2015 Mining Residue Regulations — a fragmentation that must be rationalized through a process that is truly inclusive and participatory. This I discuss elsewhere and will not delve into here, suffice it to say that tailings safety cannot be left to management or to late stages when evacuation happens.
Before the 2019 Brumadinho disaster, Minas Gerais, Brazil, had already seen at least three fatal tailings dam failures. The cause of the 2019 disaster remains unclear, but in response, the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) was launched in August 2020. Its goal is “zero harm to people and the environment” at all tailings facilities worldwide across their full lifecycle. The standard is voluntary and seeks to drive normative change through certification, compliance, and industry-wide knowledge sharing.
Constitutional Rights and Corporate Accountability
Our constitutional rights are a good starting point as they affirm active citizenry, rights to clean water, environment, and so on. In addition, I believe that the Companies Act 71 of 2008 can hold mining companies and directors accountable for tailings dam safety, which I discuss elsewhere.
What is worth keeping in mind is that tailings dam owners are legally responsible for safety. Communities can argue that disregarding their safety is “unfairly prejudicial,” giving them standing to challenge companies. This turns voluntary international standards into enforceable legal duties.
Furthermore, CSOs Safety First Guidelines for Responsible Mine Tailings Management (Safety First) as they suggest active community participation from inception of tailings dam construction and design up to the disasters. Safety First recommends high standards in construction, for instance, to avoid disaster.
Building Lawn for the people in place of Chaos
Given the legislative weakness in regulating disasters, we have focused on the Water Use Licence and the Dams Register, as they offer potential for bottom-up participation to force quality and stricter regulation of tailings.
We have also noted that the One Environmental System (OES) — a government programme meant to unite mining-related actions across departments — has been limping along. The OES was created in 2014 to bring mining-related environmental rules under one framework, using NEMA and the Waste Act. The Minister of Mineral Resources issues authorisations, while the Minister of Environmental Affairs handles appeals, with a 300-day timeframe for permits (plus 90 days for appeals). It also allows for Environmental Mineral Resource Inspectors. Until new rules on residue and rehabilitation are finalised, the old MPRDA regulations remain in effect.
However, critics argue it lets the “minerals fox guard the environmental henhouse.” The Centre for Environmental Rights cites poor execution, legislative confusion, and conflicts of interest, since the same department promoting mining also enforces environmental rules. The SAHRC (2019) echoed these concerns, noting ongoing environmental degradation, poor air and water quality, inadequate rehabilitation, weak community consultation, and fragmented oversight that leaves affected communities exposed without clear redress.
The Two Critical Registers: Dams Register and WARMS
In addition to focusing on making the OES transparent and inclusive of civil society participation, our approach was to use the two critical registers maintained by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), which we believe are essential levers for community oversight.
Under the National Water Act (1998), all qualifying dam owners are required to register within a prescribed period and have a legal obligation to register their dams. A “Dam with a Safety Risk” (Section 117(c)(i)) is defined as holding 50,000 cubic metres (water or any substance) with a wall height of 5 metres.
After the Jagersfontein disaster that killed 5 people and damaged homes and other properties including livelihoods, the head of Dam Safety, Engineer Wally Ramokopa, in an interview with SABC after the Jagersfontein disaster (SABC, 29 April 2023), demanded compliance at the risk of fines:
“We will rely on other stakeholders, such as universities and overseas entities that monitor tailings dam movements worldwide. We are aware of such studies, and some of that information will be used by our forensic investigators to see what movements might have occurred prior to the failure. A tailings dam failure doesn’t happen overnight — it is usually a gradual process. Unfortunately, the disaster happened on 11 September 2022, but it must have been monitored by others over time. We will engage stakeholders who have information that can assist us.”
In reality, widespread non-compliance isn’t about complexity — regulators lack political support to enforce existing laws. Threats without imposed fines undermine governance.
WHAT WE FOUND: Only about 29 of the 337 tailings dams that are legally obliged to register have done so. This was at the last reading of the dam register in 2024. The total number of tailings dam facilities in South Africa is still unknown.
The other, more complex tool we are keen to use is the Water Use License Register (WARMS). Its purpose is to track who uses water, where, and for what, to ensure transparency so that communities can monitor extraction and pollution risks. However, unlike the Dams Register, WARMS is not publicly accessible. DWS withholds data or cites the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), which is often incorrectly used to restrict public access to this data. POPIA, to my mind, is being improperly used to restrict access to information. Section 41(4) of the National Water Act requires public participation, but these requirements are often unfulfilled, and reports are not made public — denying affected communities oversight and direct participation.
In addition, Water Use Licences in the mining sector are fraught with malpractice, if not corruption. It has been reported over the years that, for example, in 2019, 115 mines were operating without authorisation (the most recent explicit total). In later years, in 2023, 76 mines were operating without the required water licences in major river systems. I further found that a 2025 parliamentary reply to a question implied that no mines were operating without a WUL. In light of the non-reply to AfriForum’s 2023 press statement and the non-replies to it, I believe there are many mines extracting without valid permissions. AfriForum asserted that 76 mines were operating without a valid licence.
There are, however, more structural weaknesses that cry out for urgent reform.
The lack of a public, itemised list of all compliant water users on South Africa’s Water Use Authorization and Registration Management System (WARMS) is largely due to laws such as the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), which restrict the public dissemination of personal and private body information. These challenges, especially when information is shared for public interest use, make it imperative that the knowledge held by public bodies be made available to us all.
Recommendations
We argued that whilst there are some commonalities with all bulk water services, the experience of the recent disasters of mine waste tailings dams suggests there must be a change. Tailings dams are not water reservoirs. They hold toxic mining by-products — heavy metals, cyanide, acids — and fail at rates over 100 times higher than conventional water dams. When they collapse, they unleash toxic mudflows, poison groundwater for generations, and devastate ecosystems. The examples of these are plenty, these include Brumadinho (Brazil, 2019), Jagersfontein (South Africa, 2022), and Zambia (2025). Climate change compounds these risks: ageing infrastructure was never designed for current extreme weather, and increased rainfall variability disrupts the water balance in tailings ponds, while inadequate drainage systems — as seen at Jagersfontein — become catastrophic failure points.
But excessive rainfalls should not be a problem if they were built as the CSOs Safety First Guidelines for Responsible Mine Tailings Management, Guideline 5 asserts: Where lives are not at risk, facilities should be designed to withstand at least the 10,000-year flood and earthquake events. • Design should take climate change into account for both closed and operating facilities.
It is for this reason that we strongly recommend that:
a) The Dams Register, including tailings and other waste, must be reconfigured. We propose that a Mine Tailings Dam Register should be a standalone, publicly observable platform. It must not be included as part of all the dams, and we believe that this is easy to do.
b) It must become LIVE and not a static Excel database updated at some uncertain times. By “LIVE” we mean: near-real-time updates, automated notifications when a dam changes status (e.g., ownership transfer, height increase, inspection findings), and API access for civil society monitoring.
Mining companies are legally obligated to register dams in terms of the National Water Act, and companies are equally to blame for not registering. The Government must pursue retrospective prosecution and fines through the criminal justice system against non-compliant mines, channeling funds directly into capacitating civil society regulatory efforts.
Communities must participate from the start. Open up space for affected communities and frontline workers to become effective accountability allies in both DAM REGISTER processors and WARMS. This requires practical mechanisms: mandatory community liaison committees for each tailings facility, public disclosure of inspection reports within defined timeframes, and standing community representation in dam safety review processes. The WARMS (Water Use Authorization and Registration Management System) is South Africa’s national register for recording water use volumes, users, purposes, and locations under the National Water Act of 1998.
The WARMS database must be made publicly available, balancing citizens’ rights with overarching public interest — because transparency is the cornerstone of justice and the only foundation upon which lasting safety can be built.
It too must become available to all, as it is about our safety, and then too, it cannot be static but must become LIVE.
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