South Africa’s war on social justice defenders: The assassination of Shawn ‘Paps’ Lethoko

When Shawn “Paps” Lethoko was shot dead in Stilfontein on 14 October 2025, it was not an isolated tragedy, it was the latest episode in South Africa’s quiet war on community activists who challenge power in the mineral economy.

Lethoko, a 41-year-old organiser from Taung Village and national figure in the National Association of Artisanal Miners (Naam), had become one of the most articulate voices demanding justice for mining-affected communities. His killing mirrors those of Fikile Ntshangase in 2020 and Sikhosiphi ‘Bazooka’ Radebe in 2016, both assassinated for confronting entrenched interests in the extractive sector.

Taken together, these deaths reveal an escalating pattern of repression against grassroots defenders who stand at the intersection of land, environment, and economic rights.

A predictable murder

In the months before his death, Lethoko warned colleagues that he was being followed. He had challenged not only AngloGold Ashanti and Harmony Gold, whose operations he accused of displacing communities and poisoning local water tables, but also the criminal syndicates that now dominate parts of the abandoned shafts in the North West.

He understood the double bind of artisanal miners: criminalised by the state, preyed upon by mafias, and ignored by corporations that still hold the mineral rights.

When he was gunned down, he was preparing to speak on a national panel about the meaning of ‘custodianship’ in South Africa’s mineral wealth. For many in the movement, his death was not shocking, it was foretold. “He told us he didn’t expect to live long,” said one of his comrades in the KOSH Artisanal Miners Cooperative. “He said if the law won’t protect us, then the truth must.”

A widening field of fire

Data compiled by civil society networks shows that at least 28 community leaders linked to mining, land, and environmental struggles have been killed in South Africa since 2016. Most of the cases remain unsolved. None have led to high-level prosecutions.

Researchers from the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) and the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) note that mining-related killings share a common feature: the collusion of political, corporate, and criminal power at local level. Local security contractors and ‘gold mafias’ often act as enforcers, while state authorities oscillate between neglect and complicity.

Lethoko’s killing, activists say, falls squarely within this pattern, a deliberate act of terror aimed at silencing the informal workers who refuse to surrender the underground economy to violence or extraction without consent.

The struggle that birthed NAAM

The roots of this conflict stretch back to 2016, when mining-affected communities, under the banner of the Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua), began organising artisanal miners who were being hunted as ‘Zama Zamas’.

The spark was lit in Kimberley. There, local artisanal miners, organised at street level and refusing the ‘Zama Zama’ stigma, mounted a sustained, public struggle for recognition. Backed, and amplified by Macua, they forced officials to confront the difference between criminal syndicates and community miners seeking a lawful livelihood.

That campaign culminated in a watershed moment: the first government-granted licence for artisanal mining, a precedent that broke the policy logjam and showed a legal pathway was possible.

With momentum from Kimberley, Macua facilitated the formation of the Naam, turning scattered voices into a national structure with a rights-based programme and a seat at policy tables. Lethoko was elected Naam’s first chairperson, anchored in the shafts, yet unafraid of the boardrooms, positioned squarely between corporate power and the violence of criminal capture.

As Macua and Naam pushed for the formalisation of artisanal mining, their campaigns also forced the Stilfontein crisis into public view, where 246 miners were rescued after being trapped underground.

Policy paralysis and the price of delay

Despite the Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Policy being amended in 2022, implementation has stalled. This vacuum, activists argue, is what allows syndicates to thrive, and it has now turned deadly.

“Government’s inaction is writing death warrants,” said a Sabelo Mnguni, the Macua national coordinator. “Every time the state fails to regulate, another community defender is buried.”

The SAHRC’s ongoing hearings into the Stilfontein massacre have been criticised for their slow pace and lack of protection for witnesses. Lethoko had engaged with the commission but withdrew from public testimony after receiving threats, a decision that may have saved him for only a few weeks, because less then 3 weeks later, Paps was brutally gunned down.

A call for national protection of human rights defenders

In the wake of his murder, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) reiterated long-standing demands for a national protection mechanism for human rights defenders, similar to frameworks in Latin America. Such a mechanism would guarantee state-funded security, emergency relocation, and investigative oversight independent of local police, who are often complicit with either corporate miners, or local syndicates.

South Africa ratified the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders more than two decades ago but has yet to implement a domestic system to protect activists at risk. “These are not random killings,” said an LHR spokesperson. “They are assassinations that flow from a political economy where truth-telling threatens profit.”

Aftermath and accountability

The South African Police Serviced confirmed that an investigation is underway but declined to comment on suspects. Activists remain sceptical. Previous mining-related assassinations have languished for years without convictions.

Civil society groups are now urging parliament to summon the ministers of police and of mineral resources to account for the rising body count among community leaders. For many, Lethoko’s death crystallises a larger truth: that the contest over South Africa’s minerals is no longer just about economics. It is about who lives to speak.

The cost of silence

Every assassination narrows the country’s democratic space. From Somkhele to Xolobeni to Stilfontein, the message is consistent: those who insist that the poor have rights to land, water, and dignity are expendable. Lethoko’s killing is not simply another crime; it is a political message delivered in bullets. Whether South Africa chooses to confront that message, or continue to look away, will determine the future of its democracy.

South Africa’s extractive economy continues to reproduce conditions of violence rooted in apartheid-era dispossession, where control over mineral wealth is maintained through the suppression of dissent. The murder of Shawn Lethoko is not an anomaly; it is a warning.

Christopher Rutledge is the executive director of Macua