The Zama Zama Diaries

24 November 2024

The devastating history of the Stilfontein Police station as a centre for torture of anti-apartheid activists is well known in the Matlosana district of South Africa. Many bodies of activists who were abducted, tortures and murdered in the infamous cells of that police station were dumped into open mineshaft around the towns of Orkney and Stilfontein.

Stilfontein, established in 1949 is a residential centre for three large gold mines: the Hartebeesfontein, Buffelsfontein, and Stilfontein mines.

In May 1949, two shafts (Charles and Margaret) were sunk and it was this success at Stilfontein that inspired the opening up of the Hartebeesfontein and Buffelsfontein mines.

The Margaret shaft at the Stilfontein mine, where currently over 5000 illegal miners are trapped, was the first concrete headgear ever to be erected in South Africa and was designed locally and completely constructed form local materials. The tower mounted on this headgear was the first-ever multi-rope Koepoe hoist in South Africa.

And knowing the history that is tied to the sordid mining industry and its exploitation of black men is not by coincidence that it seems the sins of apartheid are being buried by the current “black government”.

And that infamous “mini Vlakplaas”, the Stilfontein police station, which was established as a symbol of oppression of dissent against apartheid and white supremacy, seems to have become a place where white mine owners can be exonerated by black brute police force while the bones of activists disposed by their apartheid police remain forgotten in the rubble of newly rotting flesh of those deemed illegal for mining the land of their ancestors.

And recalling that decades of rapacious neoliberal development on the continent has seen many economies crumble and citizens left without no recourse, but violent protests and criminality; what did this corrupt democracy expect?

Despite its various efforts to entrepreneurially transform shattered livelihood often populating townships and villages, black communities are assailed by disproportionate unemployment in country of their birth, and their leaders condone this disparity.

It is therefore inevitable that alternative solutions from alternative communities are necessary to trigger necessary change that affects the grassroots communities, effecting ideas and techniques of healing economically disenfranchised communities.

Although among many alternative communities are those that choose to transform their lives through illegal means and not rely on often compromised institutions of power, there are valid reason for taking such routes towards economic liberation.

The Zama Zama’s are one such community which is contending with socio-economic disparities that assail South Africa today, even though their tyrannical methods seem to speak volumes of the violent nature bred into their collective psyche through dehumanisation within the exploitative mining industry.

And in the case of the current Stilfontein and Orkney Mine Stand-Off, there is an impending catastrophe that will spell disaster for this nation, because  we know that the Zama Zama’s have already desecrated those site where bones of activists like Boikie Tlhapi were discarded. 

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25 November 2024

Having followed the contentious stand off between the police and illegal miners in the Stilfontein area, it has become essential that a personal record of events be drawn each day, detailing ideas and suspicions, as well as assumptions about what the impact of the events will mean for the future.

And as the South African government continues to wait the miners out, some have resurfaced with stories of disease and deaths underground were thousands are said to be trapped or kept by force by gangs of Basotho men wielding weapons.

It is said that after the community members who had loved ones trapped in the belly of the disused mine-shafts, those who were willing to assist was blocked form the Operation Vala Mgodi, those who held prayer vigils for the miners; some effort by officials was made to send subsistence items underground.

And with the recent emergence of 14 miners, there is now confirmed reports that the gangs that control the labour have withheld the food and water from many dying toilers, and this allegation also fingers Basotho nationals for this brutal tactic.

There are also allegations that Lesotho Security Forces members are part of the gangs operating in these illegally occupied and scavenged mineshaft, and this allegation has international implications for the region.

And while debates are rife regarding the moral obligations to save the lives of the illegal miners, there is the fact that each sweltering day and night, someone’s son, father, brother is dying in the bowls of the earth.

There are varied reasons why and how many of these illegal miners found themselves in these shafts, but the obvious one has been economic; where young men are lured to the region with the prospect of finding work that will allow them to earn a living.

Many are retrenched former mine-workers who come from countries where the apartheid government’s  Gold Chambers drew vast populations of men to come toil on the mines since the time of the Native land Act and the dispossession of land from people of colour.

Yet, one is left to wonder what are the implications of the stand-off once it is over and many bodies have to left underground to rot with decent burials?

What will these gang do to the the nearby communities which they have been terrorising before these recent events and operations of attempted rescues?

And there are also sons whose parents might be stigmatised because their offspring opted to go and crush rocks under the earth to earn a living in a country strangled by unemployment and poverty. 

These families, will have to renegotiate their relationship with communities that deem these illegal miners as gangsters and murderers.

On 18 May 2023, at least 31 Lesotho nationals died during a methane gas explosion at a decommissioned mining shaft in Virginia, near Welkom, and yet zama zamas from Lesotho and other countries continue to flock to these mineshaft because of desperation, following a long history that drove fathers to look for gold underground.

In 2009, 87 dead bodies had been waiting to be identified in a morgue in the same Welkom Police Station, all pile up bodies rotting after being found at the Eland Shaft of the mine owned by Harmony Gold.

And in the wake of the recent events at Stilfontein, the Lesotho government is said to deny the crime of its people, expressing sentiments that yet another wave and shadow xenophobia against Basotho will commence.

And while the Lesotho government needs to create economic solutions that keep illegal miners in Lesotho, the country itself is grappling with high rates of unemployment and a stunted economic development strategy.

Are there any bi-lateral economic solutions that can be devised by both countries to curb this scourge of illegality that threatens to destroy relations between the peoples of both nations?

***

26 November 2024

“Two hundred thousand subterranean heroes who, by day and by night, for a mere pittance lay down their lives to the familiar ‘fall of rock’ and who, at deep levels, ranging from 1 000 to 3 000 feet in the bowels of the earth, sacrifice their lungs to the rock dust which develops miners' phthisis and pneumonia.” Sol Plaatje

The mining industrial machine in South Africa has been a contentious issue since 15-year-old Erasmus Stephanus Jacobs discovered South Africa’s first diamond, the Eureka, in Hopetown in 1867. It kickstarted what historians call the Mineral Revolution, which made few colonial opportunists wealthy beyond measure, and saw hundreds of thousands of men leaving their homes to become exploited labour and under-paid mineworkers.

The modern South African economy was built on the expendability of these lives of black African migrant mineworkers. This industry also ensured that the movements of migrant mineworkers, as well as those of all black people in South Africa, were restricted by the colonial, segregationist and apartheid states. 

Therefore, injustices of this industry have sure spawned various insidious campaigns that eventually become the Zama Zama phenomena, which is a direct consequences of the brutality of the colonial regime’s plan to extract cheap labour from Bantustans created through institutionalised dispossession of natives property and land in the early 1900.

Throughout the industry’s 150-year old history, workers have been demanding fair wages, and capitalist powers that be refused such demands while raking in immense profits. 

It is therefore understandable why there has historically been an alternative illegal industry operating in the winds of the stage of capitalist accumulation through the mining industry.

 

And while the attitude of the State towards the majority of the country’s black citizens was causing increasing upheaval, many forms of illegal mining must have began to prevail within this industry.

In 1960, a total of 435 men died in the Coalbrook colliery disaster, and an explosion at Sasol’s Middelbult colliery resulted in the deaths of 53 workers in an explosion fuelled primarily by cola dust

“The South African gold mining industry in 1980 alone employed 472 000 workers, 44 000 of whom were white and 428 000 black,” notes Prof Mark Pieth, president of the Basel Institute on Governance, in his book Gold Laundering: The dirty secrets of the gold trade. 

Today, during an advent of democratic dispensation and economic liberties for those once oppressed, we are seeing a repeat of historical injustices persisting. 

And recalling that in 2012, miners were massacred at Marikana in the North West province because went on an unauthorised strike for better pay and living conditions, one wonders if these illegal miners are not former mineworkers who experienced those tragic events and the brutality of the system protecting the lucrative mining industry.

***

27 November 2024

Launched earlier this year, Operation Vala Umgodi has led to the arrest of hundreds for the illegal extraction of minerals. Though initially aimed at curbing illegal mining, the operation has revealed deep ties between the extractive sector — especially the informal one — and the trafficking of migrants into South Africa.

And while it seems inevitable that generations of exploited black men would want their share of the wealth gained through the rocks they dug for meagre wages, it appears there is more to these disgruntled children of those exploited elders dying of silicosis, tuberculosis and other diseases related to exposure to chemicals in the mining industry.

By their thousands they have come to scavenge in those same holes of their fathers’ demise and the South African Police Services view this influx as a threat to national security and an extra-legal enterprise that has ties to human trafficking cartels and mercenary players.

The events at Stilfontein therefore meet and mediate history’s lingering specters of exploitations and exploitative practices that were deemed suitable for black males only menial hard labour that led to their social emasculation.

Today, these culprits of the illicit trade in illegally mined minerals are now living exorbitant grandeur of which even their parents could have never dreamt. They are living an exact contrasted existence, the parallels are the exploitative powers underground.

When listening to voices of concerned relatives, friends and partners of the many men who opted to crawl the darkness of burrowed holes, one sympathises and empathises with the hardships clearly experienced in that sordid environ.

And as the nation watched 20 more illegal miners emerge from their hole, detailing the piling corpses and hungry souls held at gun point; we wait to see what the powers that be will embark upon to try and speed the recovery of those willing to be rescued.

***

28 November 2024

The re-election of Donald Trump as president of the US has many implications for the gold and minerals market, which has over the years reed on the dollar as standard of exchange. 

Now that the dollar is strong, the prices of gold will impact the production of such minerals in countries such as South Africa, resulting in decreased production and output from the formal players in the industry. 

As mines close down, retrenchments soar, and those unemployed former minor find it difficult to be employed in other sector. What shows promise is the illegal return to the same decommissioned mines to eke out a livelihood through illicit trade of the minerals extracted.

It is unnerving how mainstream media has ignored the widely varying structural conditions under which migration occurs, how these Zama Zama’s came to be the scum of society as portrayed by mainstream media is also an injustice not to be defended.

When frivolous digital spaces such as TikTok, Facebook and other social media platforms become trusted sources of non-biased discourse about the implications of illegal mining, one can safely assume that mainstream media is complicit in the demonisation of select groups within the milieu of illegal miners.

And as the day draws to slumber, thoughts are with the few left to sleep embraced by the stench of rotting corpses, some mother humming prayers to gods of the underworld to protect the transgressors whom even government officials have sentenced to death.

***

29 November 2024

An exodus of escapees are emerging from underground through scattered hole perforating the mineral rich regions of Stilfontein, and law enforcement has their hands full trying to incarcerate the culprits.

The domino has tipped and trickles of people are emerging from underground speaking of the remaining kingpins still hoarding gold from slave labour of teenagers; and mothers weep for their stolen sons and sisters for brothers who might not see the light of day.

And in a country with less schools and hospitals, one wonders where these new prisoners will be housed? Will there be tenders for construction of new prisons? And as many of the arrested illegal miners are minors, what does this mean for reformation of the local correctional services?

When the bill comes due, eventually, it is the accountants and lawyers necessary for money laundering that have to pay, because they are instrumental in running an enterprise that employs unaware minors and deploys them into perilous work station that buried fathers and brothers for many.

***

05 December 2024

And as weeks pass the tragic events take the courts by storm and through concerted effort of activist organisations such as MACUA (Mining Affected Communities United In Action), the courts eventual gave an order for food and other items to be lowered to the illegal miners trapped underground.

Those who still emerge after weeks of excruciating escapes from their labour camps tell of tales that paint the situation to quiet similar to imprisonment. Guarded by armed Basotho men, these victims of forced labour looked emaciated and sickly; and they detail the cesspool of corpses and terror and food deprivation used as tool for hostage psychological assault.

Then as days trickle by with the possible death-screams of those in the Stilfontein mines, another similarly perilous rescue operation ensues in a mineshaft located close to Sabie, a  town in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa.

Media and their redacting lenses point to visuals of intricate operation to rescue screaming ZamaZama’s by a government which wanted to “smoke them out”, and suddenly the moral compass of a sanctimonious nation is re-evaluated.

Food parcels are being lowered into these depths while the mounting number of corpses are that make their way to the surface mounts like dead rock after an explosion. Each day prisoners meet newly waking boys and men, dirt ridden and smelly, all dreading their fate after living in a gaol of their worst nightmares.

Police linger beside empty vehicles with guns holstered as young men from the nearby community of Stilfontein hoist ropes down mine-shafts; each manoeuvring their bodies to lower of lift whatever weight is tethered on the other end.

 And mothers were hurriedly stocking up on water, scarce even from their taps, in bottles and buckets for toiling men and those who can find ways of drenching the thirst of unknown numbers of trapped souls. 

Of this new population of prisoners, one is left to wonder how the system is coping with the influx. What new dynamics now govern prison hierarchies? Are some of those arrested starting new gangs in those prisons around Matlosana and J B Marks Municipalities?

***

09 December 2024 

As the festive season picks up up pace, millions of people head homeward to homelands designated for black populations from the times of apartheid and land dispossessions; all hoping to be carrying some form of earnings to share with their families and bring smile to their young.

Sadly, many of these migrating populations rely on temporary employment to accumulate as much as possible to afford the minor demands of family life, as well as the dreams of children left behind trudging dust roads in rural villages in search of schools r water.

Some of those temporary workers are these Zama Zama’s, who spend stints in the darkness of tunnels dug throughout the South African underbelly, and as we observe the events transpiring at Stilfontein and Orkney, we know many will not reach home.

They will fill cells to capacity and prisons populations will soar, new gangs will be formed and another scourge of violence will happen behind bars, turning into massacres while the judiciary is on leave, touring the vast bounty this country has to offer.

Kingpins underground wield guns ordering men to shuffle under blade-sharp rocks for gold for which they will earn a penny, and the escapees braving arrest and torture find freedom in an environment filled with enraged under-paid, uncertain-tempered officers.

And as many jostle between various shafts, travelling miles in an attempt to avoid the long arm of the law, delays cost lives and corpses keep coming from beneath the earth like a sick metaphor of the dead exhumed by faulty hands.

For those still living down there, what stench roams stuffy crevices and tunnels where anyone can squat and dedicate without shame?

Can one breath faecal matter for months on end without lungs contracting some form of disease?

What about sleep? Do these slave labourers have time to dream in pitch black place known for the dead and their ill fate?

***

10 December 2024

The gold-mining industry symbolises the dispossession and exploitation that have shaped South Africa and its economy, as we today observe the country having the highest income inequality in the world.

Communities founded on the outskirts of these mines became an epitome of affluence for the white minority, yet labour camps for the black population who were located in townships and squatter camps which were constantly relocated depending on expansionist trends of the industry.

And it thus was inevitable that a cultural identity was formed by residents of these townships, which in fact delineates their colloquialism and language, demeanour and methods of social integration from nay other townships which aren’t formed around mining infrastructure.

It is therefore understandable that a camaraderie is evident between the residents of Orkney and Stilfontein, a synergic relationship that is said to have helped develop some of the townships in Matlosana.

These Zama Zama’s are revered it seems, as communities continue to rescue trapped illegal miners in an inspired collaboration with former mining experts who are able to envisage the catastrophic consequences of starving them.

A variety of people gather daily around the mineshaft to participate as enthusiastic participant sin the planned  rescue operations, but suppose that the rescue operations were complemented by large-scale excavation and rehabilitation of these disused mines for future employment to curb illegal mining?

And while these communities are ironically affected by water and soil pollution stemming from mining activities that went on without environmental concerns; they are also faced with crises ranging from unemployment and poverty, couple with the growing scourge of HIV infections.

The Zama Zama’s, as unspoken “heroes” in these communities continue to prove more skilled than their fathers, and their inventiveness within the illegal enterprise now soars above the work of their fathers masters such Anglo-Gold and Glencore, during the heydays of gold mining in South Africa.

Theirs is becoming a semi-formalised scheme that resembles money laundering within communities, where funeral parlour are enriched by taking care of burials of dead miners, where local businesses supply  a variety of goods to vast numbers of men with purchasing power underground.

For the Zama Zama’s, theirs is a multi-voiced lament that sparks a social discourse about wealth redistribution in South Africa, as well as spotlighting overlooked challenges pitted against sustainable paths into the economic future of the country. 

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