We Want to Be Legal; We’re Not ‘Zama Zama’ Criminals Say South African Artisanal Miners — Global Issues
JOHANNESBURG, January 23 (IPS) – Mining towns across South Africa have been held hostage to a booming but bloody illegal mining economy.
Wealthy tycoons, mainly from neighboring Lesotho, run crime syndicates and recruit impoverished laborers to go into abandoned underground tunnels to extract the country’s mineral resources. . Dubbed ‘Zama Zama’, many of them are former miners laid off by large legal mines and who know the details of dangerous but lucrative mining practices.
Paps Lethoko, president of National Association of Craft Miners (NAAM), says these Zama Zama spend months in underground tunnels. Their crime bosses run grocery stores in the dark side of the earth.
“Grocery stores sell bread for R200 (regular price around R20), canned fish for R300 (normally around R25). After months of living in sweltering catacombs in dangerous conditions, the miners earn around R30,000 (about $1800).
Lethoko said most of the unused bunkers in Klerksdorp, a mining town in the North West province, are run by a wealthy politician from Lesotho.
“Basotho miners are forced to pay security guards up to Rs 20,000 (approximately $1700) to get into the mines they’re working in. They are treated worse than slaves, just like mining companies. under the apartheid regime.”
Violence is inevitable. Local communities and artisanal miners, who until recently have not been able to become legal, are often caught up in the battle for territory between rival Zama Zama gangs.
In July 2022, things took a turn for the worse after the horrific gang rape of crew members at a minefield near the West Village in Krugersdorp on the West Rand. Police arrested 80 Zama Zama, 14 of whom were directly involved in the rape but were later acquitted.
Craft miners, who already struggle with bureaucracy and lack the proper legal mechanism to get a license to operate legally, say the rape has damaged their careers. them more.
“We tried to form a cooperative and get a license to operate legally, but mining companies, the media and even the police labeled us with the criminal Zama Zama,” said Lethoko. .”
An advocate assisted them at Legal Resource Center (LRC) agrees: “People and even the police don’t understand that manual miners, basically locals, who have been mining for centuries in survival mode, want to be law-abiding citizens but are thwarted by a broken system every step of the way.”
The TTHL published a report in 2016 on the operating conditions of manual miners, and little has changed since.
In the Northwest Province, NAAM has been trying to negotiate with mining giant Harmony Gold to allow manual miners to continue mining on the mine’s rings. “Locals know where to find gold in abandoned mines. This is local knowledge because they’ve been doing it for a long time, but we wanted it legal so we set up a cooperative and had a meeting with the public. ty. .
Lethoko said: “The next thing, Harmony’s security system prevented them from mining on the land even though it was long abandoned, and the company filed a petition to ban me and the miners for crimes violate.
Worse still, a gold rush followed after news of an abundance of gold in the region spread.
“Basotho Zama Zama came in droves; they had a lot of money, so they bribed the mine security and took over the area where local artisan miners had been banned by the mine.”
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) currently recognizes manual mining, but obtaining permits is expensive and troublesome.
“Craft miners make a living by making a mouthful; most of us don’t have the data or even the money to get a license, and DMRE officials at the local level don’t seem to know that contracts artisanal mining cooperatives can now be legally recognized.”
Lethoko says the remaining problem is the lack of a legal framework. “The regional DMRE and most local government officials don’t know that we have the right to be recognised, so they and the police continue to treat us like criminals instead of helping us get permits.”
Applying for a permit is literally a “minefield”. So far, only one cooperative in Kimberley in the Northern Cape province has been legally recognized since the law changed in 2017.
Toto Nzamo, a member of the Tujaliano Community Foundation, said xenophobic tensions frequently erupt when Zama Zama violence spills over into local communities.
A policy of small-scale and manual fishing that recognizes the potential of manual fishing as a livelihood strategy also does not help, leaving the permit system to South Africans.
Nzamo works with artisan miners and Zama Zama at the informal settlement Makause in Germiston near Johannesburg, who are engaged in surface gold mining at an abandoned mine and are having difficulty obtaining permits .
“They have to form cooperatives, identify the land they want to exploit, and carry out environmental assessments. These people have neither the skills nor access to the necessary currency. a geologist costs at least 82,000 Rupees; these poor people should get that kind of money?” Nzamo asked.
He said that the only way to end the violence and crime of Zama Zama is for the Home Office and the DMRE to work together to ensure that eligible foreign nationals receive their documents quickly.
“The tragedy is that among the criminal syndicates, the big miners are returning to the mines they once abandoned because there is now the technology to make mining profitable again, and the incompetent DMRE who decent law-abiding is being prevented from earning a legitimate living,” the lawyer said.
Report of the UN IPS Office
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