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Essentially, the discussions on the Stilfontein mine catastrophe evade the brutal fact that the mining magnates are the primary culprits.
By MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
The death of 78 people at the Stilfontein gold mine in North West Province, which has been a site of illicit mining since its closure in 2013, has led to some commentators likening the calamity to the Coalbrook disaster and Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the Marikana massacre of 2012.
Many blame the disaster on the action taken by the government in August 2024 to force illegal miners to come to the surface and be arrested, and its procrastination to mount a rescue operation for the illegal artisanal miners trapped underground. Essentially, the discussions on the Stilfontein mine catastrophe evade the brutal fact that the mining magnates are the primary culprits.
The mining companies have a legal and moral obligation to set aside resources for the casing and rehabilitation of shut mines and for ensuring the health and safety and environmental rights of the communities within the vicinity of the shut mines. They have an obligation to develop and implement a post-mining transition plan that goes beyond long-term maintenance and conversion of a mine site for other uses, to include interventions that are aimed at improving the socio-economic wellbeing of the communities.
In addition to the fact that mining companies abdicate all these responsibilities when they shut mines, sources within the mining industry indicate that there are many instances where greedy capitalists within operational and formal mines enlist the services of the ‘illegal artisanal miners’ – so-called zama zamas – and have all sorts of illicit dealings with the mafias that run the zama zama operations.
Illegal mining activities take place specifically because the mining companies renege on these obligations and because of the failure of the government to enforce compliance by the mining industry
While the government fails to compel the mining companies to implement post-mining programmes that ensure the socio-economic development of the communities, it also does little to local socio-economic development within the communities that previously depended on working in mining and related industries. This makes the government complicit in the structural arrangements that create a conducive environment for illegal mining.
However, it is erroneous to portray all people who were trapped in the Stilfontein mine as innocent victims.
On the one hand, there are poor and desperate working-class people who were lured underground by a greedy zama zama mafia that takes advantage of their desperation to use them as ‘labour slaves’ . On the other hand, there is a criminal cartel that pursues a life of luxury through the illegal mining industry while subjecting the poor people they use as their digging boys to a life of misery. The images of frail people emerging out of the mine and the stories they tell provide evidence that the tons of food, medicine and cigarettes that were sent underground were hoarded by this greedy and cruel clique of criminals who denied their ‘labour slaves’ access to these.
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The memory of the spate of rapes in the West Rand in which zama zamas were implicated should be able to make us not shrug off the possibilities that the mining underground also work as a convenient hideout for individuals who are running from more serious crimes like rape and murder. Neither must we rebuff the allegation of the involvement of the zama zama mafia in human trafficking.
The other fact that we must amplify is that there is indeed a comprehensive, and complex, value chain in the illicit mining industry. If we follow the entire value chain, there is a high likelihood of finding some elements of the local and global corporations, the police and government officials in the range of actors and benefactors. The fact that there are people who are getting filthy rich from the activities in the shut mines such as Stelfontein suggests that there is cause for the government to investigate the reopening of such mines under government control and public ownership, using sophisticated equipment to extract gold.
Also, this incident makes a loud case for government control and public ownership of the mining industry to ensure that this industry prioritises public interest and the social good, and not unbridled accumulation of private wealth as is currently the case.
Mphutlane wa Bofelo is a political theorist who focuses on the interface between politics, governance and development.
