South Africa's illegal gold miners are locked in an underground standoff with police

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Sleeping next to decomposing corpses and surviving on a foul mixture of toothpaste mixed with toilet paper.

That’s how an unknown number of unauthorized miners — believed to be in the hundreds — have been surviving for weeks, possibly months, over a mile deep underground in a disused mine shaft in the South African town of Stilfontein.

In South Africa, workers at illegal gold mines like these are known as “zama-zamas,” meaning “one who takes a chance” in the Zulu language.

Over the past several weeks, the zama-zamas at Stilfontein have been locked in a standoff with police, who surrounded the entrance to the mine shaft and blocked off their food supplies in an attempt — in the words of one cabinet minister — to “smoke them out.”

Police say the miners are refusing to resurface because they fear arrest and, for many who are migrants from neighboring countries, deportation.

But a community leader in the area, Thembile Botman, says that even if the miners do want to come up, they can’t without assistance, as their colleagues who usually remain above ground to pull the ropes that bring them up have been arrested. Now, those below are also starving and too weak.

“We sent a former zama-zama underground,” Botman told NPR. “He found people are sleeping next to dead bodies. They don’t have strength and they are ready to resurface.”

“It was really saddening, they said they were eating Colgate, mixing it with vinegar and salt in the palm of their hand. Some would take toilet paper, mix it with toothpaste, and eat it,” he added.

Rights groups outraged at the police’s tactics went to court over the weekend, which ruled the police must allow food and supplies down the hole to keep the miners alive. The miners, some of whom are living with HIV/AIDS, have also asked for their antiretroviral drugs to be sent down. 

Community members have been the only ones trying to bring the zama-zamas to the surface over the past two weeks, and Botman says 50 men pulling on a makeshift rope have brought up 12 people.

Authorities have now decided to take over and stage a rescue mission and a task team is currently constructing an unmanned cage to send down the hole that will bring eight people up at a time, every 45 minutes. But that’s only expected to be ready to use next week.

In the meantime, things in the dark and dangerous warren of tunnels that lie beneath the abandoned gold mine have become nightmarish.

Botman says one zama-zama he helped to bring up recounted how another miner had tried to murder him for food. “One of them came out with a wound on his head and explained that somebody tried to strangle him underground for a scoop of porridge,” he says.

Wild West

South Africa experienced a gold rush in the 1880s, with prospectors coming from all over to try their luck in Africa’s very own wild west.

The economic hub Johannesburg was known as "egoli," meaning "city of gold," and for a long time South Africa was the world’s biggest gold producer.

But, while the country still has large gold deposits, it has become increasingly expensive and difficult to mine, and many large mining conglomerates have shut down operations causing miners to lose their jobs.

Some of these unemployed miners have turned to illegal mining at the abandoned sites, using the only skills they have.

Many are from Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Mozambique and are incredibly impoverished, eking out a living while risking life and limb in tunnels that could collapse. They also face exposure to dangerous underground gases, as well as fights with rival, armed zama-zama groups.

David Van Wyk, a researcher with the Bench Marks Foundation, an NGO that works on issues surrounding illegal miners, told NPR there are some 6,000 abandoned mines in South Africa.

“It’s basically a free-for-all that has evolved and that has resulted in [illegal] mine workers becoming super exploited … and the police never arrest the mining syndicates that control them,” Van Wyk says.

Meanwhile, he says, the criminal kingpins are getting rich off illegally mined gold.

“We have recommended to government that they regulate small-scale and artisanal mining and that they make these operations legal. So long as these operations are illegal, they fall prey to syndicates,” he says. “Everyone is profiting from it except the poor guys who find themselves starved underground.”

Zama-zamas have been a problem in South Africa for years, but recently the government promised to crack down, launching the operation taking place now, named “Vala Umgodi” or “close the hole.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa weighed in earlier this week on the police action at Stilfontein.

“The Stilfontein mine is a crime scene where the offense of illegal mining is being committed. It is standard police practice everywhere to secure a crime scene and to block off escape routes that enable criminals to evade arrest,” he said in a statement.

“Some illegal miners have been implicated in serious and violent crimes, including murder and gang rape. Many are in the country illegally. Illicit mining activity costs our economy billions of Rands in lost export income, royalties and taxes,” he continued.

Some in the mining industry have likened the situation to a war zone and zama-zamas are widely unpopular with locals. Numerous South Africans have been posting on social media that they are in support of the police action in Stilfontein.

However, community leader Botman says he can “attest to the economic benefit” from the zama-zamas in his area, which he says now has new shops and a KFC restaurant "because of them."

A whole industry has developed around zama-zamas to supply the men with food, cigarettes, alcohol and even prostitutes while they’re underground.

The zama-zamas in Stilfontein now face another weekend down the disused shaft.

Zwelinzima Vavi, head of a power group of South African trade unions, has warned the government it risked being responsible for “murder.” He said the rescue efforts were taking too long to get underway and said he was worried the miners would be "subjected to a slow death."

Copyright 2024, NPR

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