Some zama zamas (illegal artisanal miners) are the offspring of men (and women) who were once classified as “expired workers” and “rejects” by the expansive and exploitative migrant labour system that relied on inbound trains to bring young men into the South African goldfields, and outbound trains to discard the weak, the sickly and out-of-contract workers throughout the southern African subregion. So perfect was the system that the trains had a weekly schedule to replenish the workforce recruited by a monopsony of labour recruitment agencies and bureaus with the help of coercive traditional chiefs.
It was able to churn out workers at industrial scale, reaching 400 000 in some years. To rephrase Hugh Masekala’s emotive rebel yell against the degrading rail transportation of migrant workers: these trains came from Namibia and Malawi; from Zambia and Zimbabwe; from Angola and Mozambique; from Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland; from all the hinterlands of southern and central Africa carrying young and old African men conscripted to come and work on contract in the goldfields of Johannesburg on 16-hours shifts with almost no pay.
Today, as many South Africans tap their feet to Masekela’s jazz melody and hurl insults or unleash sniffer dogs at zama zamas, it is worth remembering that the passengers he sings about are in the main distraught and humiliated foreign migrants who have since been dispatched back to impoverished communities, to subsistence farming, a dearth of socioeconomic challenges including substance abuse and poor mental health support, to broken families and death beds. Their children have found a way back into South Africa by evading borders, some were even trafficked, in search of elusive gold remnants left by their forebears underneath.
They are prepared to risk their lives, toiling thousands of abandoned shafts and unencumbered mineral deposits using rudimentary tools throughout South Africa. In the absence of formal channels for redress, zama zamas are arguably engaging in transnational protest action for reparations to reclaim wages lost by their predecessors through salvaging or, in the words of South Africans, pillaging the little gold dust left and laying claim to various mineral-bearing sites through no legal title but actual possession/occupation without contest. A combination of long-standing economic and political challenges in the sub-region – not forgetting the dearth of non-mining job opportunities in South Africa as a favourite migrant destination – drives the majority of the job seeking migrants to illegal mining (and informal) activities, in what appears to be an unending cycle.
The discovery of abandoned shafts brought back the gold rush in Johannesburg, attracting thousands of zama zamas who are seemingly becoming a menace to the surrounding communities. Some of the illegal miners are purportedly committing crime and terrorising communities with guns, as it has become apparent with the recent disheartening incident of gang rape in Krugersdorp (formerly a mining town). This incident was the last straw that sparked violent community protests against zama zamas and possibly also the unravelling of social compact between the locals and foreigners – amid the fragile migration situation. “Call the military, close these shafts and deport ‘these’ people back home,” quarrelled some members of the community at a meeting organised by the minister of police to quell the rampage.
The swift response by the police almost gave credence to anecdotes that zama zamas have been flagged as a threat to national security by the powers that be. Crime is not necessarily synonymous with people by virtue of geographic origin or engagement in unlicensed/informal economic activity. However, certain businesses lend themselves to violent and criminal conduct because of the organisational patterns and levels of business sophistication.
The minibus taxi industry is one example. Drug-dealing, however inappropriate, is another. Taxi owners fight for routes, drug dealers fight for turf. Zama zamas are no different. “Shaft lords” organise themselves along ethnic lines to protect their digging area, just as the masters of the erstwhile migrant labour system would have “sorted” miners by ethnicity inside the flea-ridden barracks and hostels.