KENNEDY MANDUNA | Zama zamas: victims, not criminals

Over the past month, South Africa has seen more horrible examples of a tug-of-war between the zama zamas — illegal miners — and the police. Such wars have become a permanent feature of the country’s political economy post-1994. South Africa has about 6,100 derelict, unsafe, abandoned and ownerless mineshafts whose rehabilitation costs exceed R49bn. The Minerals Council South Africa has estimated that the mining sector loses about R21bn yearly due to the zama zamas’ operations.

The Enact Report has revealed that South Africa’s illegal mining sector is one of Africa’s biggest channels of illicit gold trading, whose outputs exceed R14.4bn yearly. Thus, with the country having an increased number of these mineshafts, a criminal economy inevitably sprouts up, with thousands of men and women risking their lives scavenging for leftover minerals in some of the world’s deepest shafts.

A purely legal reflection of the problem posits that illegal mining is a criminal offence in South Africa, and should be treated with the contempt it deserves. Stretching this further, their barbaric acts of raping women (which is alleged to have happened in Krugersdorp last year), shoot-outs with the police, terrorising and robbing community members, human trafficking, money-laundering, environmental degradation, drug smuggling and the possession of illegal weapons and explosives, are as illegal as they are immoral. From this viewpoint, it is rational and logical to reason that the reported activities of zama zamas are criminal and uncalled for, and the police’s concerted efforts to eliminate illegal mining are brave and honourable. The police should be lauded for protecting and upholding the country’s mineral sovereignty, security and safety of all citizens, economic security, territorial integrity, state authority, and national infrastructure.

This viewpoint justifies a heavy-handed state-sponsored/sanctioned/assisted approach characterised by violence, arrests by police and mine security officers, community vigilantism, xenophobia, and legal and a regulatory framework to deal with the problem.

However, a closer and more nuanced analysis points to a different story: in the grand scheme of things, the zama zamas are not mere criminals but victims of circumstance. Most zama zamas are not in the illegal mining space by choice. Instead, many have been pushed into it by unfortunate political, social and economic circumstances. It is a callous business where only the fittest survive.

Research by Maxwell Chuma shows circumstances forcing people into illegal mining include job losses and economic hardships in the wake of the structural adjustment policies of the 1990s, the dot.com crisis of the early 2000s, the Great Depression of 2007-2008 and recently the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The exponential growth of illegal mining activities and associated criminality results from many intersectional and structural factors, past and present, unique to South Africa.

First, the new Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act neither promotes nor supports the operations of artisanal and small-scale miners. Second, structural, racialised and widespread inequalities proliferate: the means and factors of mining production are still in the hands of few non-black individuals. Third, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on job losses. Fourth, transborder migration from neighbouring regional countries. Fifth, the current record-high unemployment rate of 32,9 % (considered among the highest globally). As of 2022, about 18.2-million South Africans lived in extreme poverty — with the poverty threshold at $1.90 per day. This number shows that about 123,000 more South Africans were pushed into poverty compared to 2021. By 2025, 18.5-million South Africans are expected to live on $1.90 a day.

Furthermore, studies conducted by Maxwell Chuma and Christopher Clark have established that more than 75% of the zama zamas are illegal immigrants from neighbouring Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho. The economic meltdown, political instability and social upheavals in their home countries come as additional push factors. The remaining 25% are former mineworkers and locals — women included. 

By 2019, the country had about 30,000 zama zamas, up from 3,000 in 1999. However, the number rose exponentially to more than 40,000 by 2021; at present, the number is likely to be way higher.

Thus, to better respond — and resist — zama zamas’ operations, we should advocate and lobby for addressing the intersectional, complex and structural challenges that drove them into illegal mining sector in the first place. While their activities threaten state, business, industry, society and environmental security, there are other, inventive ways to survive this harsh and vicious post-Covid-19 exclusionary economy. 

Therefore, the government should prioritise addressing economic, social and political challenges driving people into illegal mining.

After all, who, between the transitional large-scale mining companies and artisanal and small-scale miners, are the biggest zama zamas in (South) Africa? While the answer to this intractable question is contentious, if you say the former, that makes the two of us. The former is protected by the existing legal, institutional and policy frameworks, while the latter protects itself as it governs at the edge of the state. 

* Dr Kennedy Manduna is postdoctoral research fellow and political economy analyst at the Wits School of Governance. He’s also a Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung scholar.