Tailings dam collapse at Samancor's Dikwena chrome operation floods North West farmland

A tailings dam wall at the Dikwena chrome operation near Brits in North West province collapsed on 13 August 2026, releasing what local reports described as almost all the waste stored inside the facility. The breach sent a surge of thick mineral slurry across the surrounding area, damaging mine infrastructure, a railway line and Eskom power lines, and cutting electricity to parts of Brits, Hennops and surrounding communities.

Samancor said heavy rainfall of between 4.2mm and 4.8mm in the three days before the collapse, roughly equivalent to the area's entire monthly average, had penetrated the dam structure and raised internal pore pressure to the point of failure, combined with what the company described as pre-existing structural vulnerabilities. No injuries or deaths were reported.

A wide-reaching impact

The sludge trail extended for several kilometres, raising concerns about contamination of groundwater, wetlands and agricultural land in the vicinity given the presence of chromium in the waste. The spill also temporarily blocked the access road to Northam Platinum's nearby Eland mine at Maroelabult, disrupting operations there even though Northam was not responsible for the dam.

Company and government response

Samancor chief executive Desmond McManus said the company "takes full responsibility for the disaster," even though the facility had reportedly been operated by a separate contractor, One Chrome. Samancor deployed heavy machinery to clear the mud and begin restoring damaged infrastructure. The South African government ordered an immediate halt to further tailings deposition at the site, launched a formal investigation into the cause of the failure, and said independent structural audits would be required before operations could resume.

Part of a pattern

The Dikwena collapse follows South Africa's most notorious tailings failure, the 2022 Jagersfontein diamond-waste disaster, for which five men were criminally charged in September 2025 and which a subsequent investigation found had been built without proper engineering oversight. Mining engineers have pointed to the recurrence of dam failures, at very different types of operations, chrome tailings at Dikwena and diamond tailings at Jagersfontein, as evidence of systemic weaknesses in how South Africa monitors ageing and re-engineered waste facilities, particularly those exposed to increasingly erratic rainfall patterns. The incident is likely to add pressure on the Department of Water and Sanitation to tighten dam-safety inspection regimes across the minerals sector.

Sources

• Eyewitness News: Samancor Dikwena dam collapse: here's what we know, 18 Aug 2026