Zama zamas need state protection, not persecution

The Stilfontein mining siege, which started in August last year and continued until January this year, claimed the lives of over 80 miners and left many others missing. It sparked an outcry from surviving miners, their families, and civil society. The police action to ‘smoke them out of the hole’ serves as a chilling reminder of the risks faced by artisanal miners in South Africa, who fall through the cracks of unregulated small-scale mining operations in the country.

My life is at a standstill because there is nothing that I am doing to put food on the table for my family. The only thing we have tried as a community, is to gather and see how we can help poor families like mine to survive. It is hard because we don’t know any other life but the one that we were living. Even going to nearby towns like Klerksdorp to find work, there is no luck, I can’t find anything.

These are the words of Ayanda Ndabeni, a surviving miner who was trapped underground for days before he was rescued out of the shaft by community members.

Ndabeni is from a rural town in the Eastern Cape, Lusikisiki. He was a young man with dreams of going to the community college in the town that his father was working in as a miner. When the community college was demolished, Ndabeni joined an existing system of artisanal mining and has since 2012, relied on this to make a living. In an average month, Ndabeni said that he was not making less than R10,000 underground.

“The places we mine in have been abandoned by big companies who claimed that there was nothing left there. But because we decided to risk our lives, we saw the opportunity to work underground and make a living for ourselves and our families. That is what we are doing underground. We need the government to help us with a solution to decriminalise our work so that we can get back to it,” he said.

A human rights crisis

Following a request from Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua), along with other affected communities, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) intervened to address the devastating impact of the police operation, Vala Umgodi. The operation, aimed at cracking down on illegal mining, resulted in miners being trapped underground in the old Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein without food or water.

A zama-zama using a ‘phenduka’ to refine and extract minerals. Photo by Ramatamo Sehoai

Jessica Lawrence, senior attorney at LHR and the lead on their environmental rights programme, which provides free legal assistance to mining affected communities, described the state in which some of the rescued miners were in when they were eventually rescued as “incredibly emaciated and in poor health”.

“We were concerned that prolonged absence of food and water was going to have a serious consequence and impact on the miners’ right to dignity and their right to life but also expose them to undignified conditions. We are not saying that the police shouldn’t fulfill their mandate of combating crime but what the police cannot do is fulfill that mandate in a way that violates these constitutional rights,” she said.

Lawrence argues that regularising artisanal mining would help protect miners and ensure safer working conditions, preventing tragedies like the one in Stilfontein.

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) through its Small-Scale Mining Directorate promotes small-scale mining activities in South Africa. The aim is to regulate artisanal and small-scale mining so that mining activities can be undertaken in a safe, secure and environmentally responsible manner. – DMRE, 2024

The DMRE has long acknowledged the importance of regulating small-scale mining and has set up a directorate to foster a safe, secure, and environmentally responsible small-scale mining sector. However, many believe that more needs to be done to implement real reform.

Lawrence emphasised that the call for the regulation of artisanal mining has been loud for years, especially because of the poor and declining socio-economic conditions that mining communities across the country are in.

“Artisanal mining is a way in which communities can make a living for themselves. It’s very clear that even the state itself recognises that artisanal mining takes place across the African continent. Wherever there are formal mining operations, there is small scale or artisanal mining. To ensure that we combat the criminal elements that pose a risk to communities, and the health and safety of the miners, it can all be addressed through state regulation,” she said.

Zama-zamas in Stilfontein

According to David Van Wyk, a researcher with the Benchmarks Foundation, the lack of legislation and regulation is to blame for the criminal elements in the world of artisanal miners, known as zama zamas.

“Artisanal miners have been forced to work in dangerous, abandoned shafts left by big companies. They’re left without legal protection and preyed upon by criminal syndicates, including security companies, labour brokers, and even mine owners themselves have taken advantage of this lack and exploited these workers who are trying to survive.”

Van Wyk has worked with zama-zamas for over 20 years. He traces the history of artisanal mining in Stilfontein back to the post-World War II era when large-scale mining operations began in the area.

“It started in the late 1940s, just like the mines in the Free State as well, and it was a real boom for Britain, because Britain owed America a huge amount of money for all the weapons that they bought from America during the Second World War. Britain was basically bankrupt. So, the Free State gold fields and elsewhere provided the gold for Britain to get out of its war debt and to recover its economy.”

He continued: “And suddenly, those shafts were closed. Thousands of workers rocked up about five years ago at work, and they were told that there’s no more work. There were no retrenchment procedures according to the law, the workers were simply locked out. Their pensions were not paid, their unemployment benefits were not paid. Nothing of the legal requirements of law was followed through.” The sudden closure of the mines led to a ripple impact on the entire economy of the working class in these areas, throwing everyone into desperate poverty.

Zama-zamas say they get extorted by the police. File photos by Ramatamo Sehoai

The call for regulation

“The retrenchments and closing of mines left people in our community with hunger and unemployment. So, they went back to mining the resources that were left behind by big companies which claimed that there was nothing left, and now they are labelled as illegal and as criminals. But people here don’t know another way that they can make money to survive,” said Khuma community leader, Johannes Qankase.

He described Khuma as a gold town that became a ghost town because of the harsh impact that closed mining companies, abandoned mine shafts, and demolished infrastructure had on the community. “It resulted in many people living in poverty and hunger. There is no employment here for young people. And now this Vala Umgodi operation has affected many livelihoods and will continue to affect communities.”

Qankasa said that they have begged and pleaded with the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy to discuss how best to speed up the regularisation of artisanal mining for the sake of the many families that depend on it. “Legalising artisanal mining will protect and help communities. There is valuable material underground that miners are finding; help them to be able to sell these legally so that they can make a living. Legalise it so that miners can be protected, and communities can thrive.”