Samancor tailings dam bursts – disaster narrowly avoided

The aftermath of the tailings storage facility failure at Samancor’s Dikwena Chrome Mine near Brits.

Platinum Weekly newspaper | Brits – The photographs are dramatic. Videos show an enormous mass of grey tailings where it should never have been. But what the images cannot fully capture is how much worse the Dikwena Chrome tailings dam failure could have been.

At approximately 17:30 on Thursday, 13 August 2026, the northern wall of Compartment 1B of a tailings storage facility (TSF) at Samancor’s Dikwena Chrome operation near Brits failed. According to the Department of

Water and Sanitation (DWS), almost all of the tailings, or slimes, stored in the compartment were released.

The escaping material moved towards the R566 provincial road, but a railway embankment and berms at the neighbouring Eland Mine acted as barriers, preventing the slimes from reaching the road.

It is difficult to appreciate the significance of this from photographs alone. The R566 carries motorists, workers, taxis and heavy vehicles daily. Had the material continued unhindered towards the road, the consequences could potentially have been catastrophic. Remarkably, no casualties were reported.

The incident nevertheless caused damage to mine infrastructure, the railway line and Eskom powerlines, while an unnamed tributary was polluted. Water samples were collected from the affected watercourse, with laboratory results pending at the time of the government’s statement.

Engineers from the DWS Specialist Unit: Dam Safety Regulation and officials from the Limpopo-Olifants Catchment Management Agency (LOCMA) were dispatched to the scene. Together with the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR), they conducted an assessment of the incident and its impact.

Investigations are underway to establish the cause of the failure. Until these investigations are completed, speculation about what caused the wall to collapse should be treated with caution.

As a precautionary measure, DWS issued a verbal directive instructing the mine to stop depositing tailings into any of its tailings dams while investigations continue.

Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina has also reiterated her call for mining houses to register tailings dams that meet the requirements for classification as dams with a safety risk, allowing the department to exercise its oversight role.