In South Africa the national police force is besieging illegal miners underground,[1] waiting for them to come to the surface to face arrest. The police are denying the miners access to food, water and electricity, in an attempt to “smoke them out.” As the crisis has unfolded, volunteers have been permitted to enter the mine shafts to assist the miners underground, and the police were instructed by an interim court order to end the siege. However, the police remained on site to arrest any miners emerging from underground. As of 22nd of November police had called in mine rescue professionals to help the surviving miners to come to the surface. Estimates of the miners’ numbers vary between 1,000 and 1,500.
Having worked in the 1980’s as an industrial chemist on one of the gold and uranium mines in the very town of Stilfontein in which this drama is unfolding, the miners’ plight has captured my interest. I have seen the living and working conditions of my colleagues during the decades of enforced racial segregation of apartheid. Despite many changes in the past 40 years, much still remains the same. The crass exploitation of human muscle power, and the wealth to be gained by people at higher levels of the mining economy, seem to be constant.
What is the reason for this strange and potentially dangerous action by the police? They are enforcing the law regarding mining and mineral rights. The miners underground are operating without licences in mines which have been abandoned by the official companies which no longer deem them profitable. The miners underground are breaking the law by trespassing, and by not contributing to the national coffers through taxation of any declared income.
The story takes some unravelling: It is always useful to take a historical perspective. As is often the case, many of Africa’s woes date back to the colonial period. Legally, South Africa’s mineral resources belong to the people, and the state is the custodian.[2] Over the past 150 years, the government has granted the rights to prospect, exploit, process and utilise the country’s rich mineral deposits to colonial and more recently South African companies and individuals. Thus, multinational corporations and local wealthy elites have prospered from their acquisition of the minerals. They have established mines, employed millions of unskilled and semi-skilled labourers, often from neighbouring countries, who have no right of permanent residence or representation in the country. Much of the ore is exported in its raw state, with minimal beneficiation (and thus value addition) taking place in South Africa. The finished products are then sold in South Africa at prices much higher than if they were produced locally. This law of colonial extraction continues to this day.
Once the mineworkers became unionised in the 1980’s, the profitability of the mines dropped, as workers could collectively negotiate for just wages and living and working conditions. This made the mining operations less profitable. So a number of the historical British companies withdrew, creating space for South African, Australian, American, Canadian, and more recently, Chinese companies to invest in a new wave of colonial exploitation.
After 1994, the first democratically elected government stated its aim to spread the wealth of the country as widely as possible to formerly disadvantaged members of the population. The Mining Charter requires that mining companies be ‘BEE compliant” in order to qualify for a licence from the government.[3] So politically connected, and business-savvy African people are now among the extravagantly wealthy owners of mining companies.[4] The law allows title holders thirty years to exploit the rights that they have acquired. After 30 years, if the holder demonstrates that a mine is in operation, the title can be renewed, or it reverts to the state.
When a mine is deemed to be no longer profitable, it is often abandoned by the formal company, with many of the access points still open, or easily breachable. Scant attention is paid to the mandatory environmental rehabilitation. South Africa is no exception to the worldwide pattern of mines leaving indescribable environmental destruction in their wake – wastelands totally unsuitable for any economic activity: the soil is frequently destroyed by chemicals; water is polluted; toxins leach into the water table; vegetation cannot grow; animal life cannot survive; agriculture is impossible. The human settlements that developed around the mines depended on a single source of income, and having no economic backbone, become ghost towns. The mining companies have packed up and taken their profits offshore, de-registering, or leaving empty shell companies to deal with any legal battles that may arise.
It is in this context that the Stilfontein informal miners are gleaning the remnants in the seams of gold, more than 2,000m underground, often with minimal technical or safety infrastructure. Indeed, as the police allege, a good number of them might be undocumented foreigners, and the government’s knee-jerk response is to deport them. Ed Stoddard[5] points out that during the height of the mining industry, some 500,000 annual “migrant” employees came from Mozambique, Lesotho [and Malawi] to work in the mines. When the industry downsized, the number of workers from neighbouring countries dropped to some 35,000. This caused “a ‘remittance shock’ without parallel in modern global economic history.”
However many of the townsfolk of Stilfontein regard the miners as their “brothers” who are risking their lives to provide a trickle of gold into the town. Whether this term indicated directly family relationship, or a sense of kinship with the miners, it not clear. What is evident, is that in the midst of great poverty, with frequent outbursts violent crime, any income is better than no income at all. Men are prepared to risk their lives to work underground with no amenities or safety regulations to send money home.
The Stilfontein standoff should also be seen within the context of a continent-wide phenomenon: Across Africa, alongside the formal mining operations conducted by well-heeled multinational corporations, hazardous ‘artisanal’ mining is the only source of income for millions of people. Men, women and children eke out a living digging for the minerals to feed the insatiable appetite of the modern industrial economies. When sufficient small-scale miners pool their products, through a series of dealers and consolidators, this makes a significant supplement to the larger parallel trade in precious metals, platinum group metals, non-ferrous metals, diamonds, and rare earth elements that are needed to power the green economy. In the ‘artisanal’ sector, many people lose their lives when tunnels cave in, toxic chemicals are inhaled or ingested, or disputes arise over non-regulated finds. In addition, in the case of South Africa, where the mines are the deepest in the world, some of them going down more than 4,000m underground, extreme temperatures of up to 50°C, with insufficient ventilation, can kill a person with heat stress.[6] Above ground, in the wheeling and dealing, fortunes are still made by the people higher up in the trade.
Coincidentally on 18th November, The World Gold Council published Silence is Golden: A Report on the Exploitation of Artisanal Miners to Fund War, Terrorism and Organised Crime.[7] In the report the council quotes World Bank estimates that artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) accounts for about 20% of the newly-mined gold worldwide. In addition, ASGM accounts for about 80% of all employment in the gold industry. Since the financial flows from the trade in this sector of the gold industry are neither regulated nor licit, the report alleges that the money is potentially used to fund war, terrorism and organised crime around the world.
One of the pillars of Catholic Social Teaching is the universal destination of all goods. International trade has flourished over the millennia to bring the gifts of God’s bountiful creation to their ultimate destination. But this trade should not come at an unbearable cost to those whose vocation is to make the riches of the earth available. Communities that have nothing else to offer than the mineral wealth of their land should be the immediate beneficiaries. Miners, and particularly artisanal miners need to be acknowledged as contributors to their local and national economies. They need pastoral outreach and support. But how does one ensure dignified and safe working conditions, incomes, housing and nutrition in an industry that is by nature informal and under the radar? Certainly the approach of the South African Police Service is not the way to do it.
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[1] See Aleks Phillips, “Police Vow to Arrest South African Miners as Standoff Continues,” BBC, 17 November 2024.
[2] cf. The Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002, which replaced the Minerals and Energy Laws Rationalisation Act of 1994 which in turn had replaced The Minerals ACT 50 of 1991. The 2002 Act was amended in 2005, and again in 2008. So the legal situation regarding South Africa’s minerals is in flux.
[3] The 2018 iteration of this charter requires that all mining companies have a Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) quota of 25%+1 of the voting owners being Historically Disadvantaged Persons. Importantly, the charter also sets minimal standards for safety, remuneration, living conditions, pensions, etc.
[4] See, for example an article describing one of South Africa’s better known mining magnates, Patrice Motsepe: Susan Adams, “The Prince of Mines” Forbes, 6 March 2008 https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0324/088.html
[5] Ed Stoddard, “After the Bell: Smoking out an Alternative to the ‘Surrender or Starve’ Strategy of SA’s Illegal Miners.” The Daily Maverick, (21 November 2024) https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-11-21-after-the-bell-smoking-out-an-alternative-to-the-surrender-or-starve-strategy-on-sas-illegal-miners/
[6] Cf. U.S. Department of Labour Mine Safety and Health Administration, “Heat Stress,” (n.d.) https://www.msha.gov/safety-and-health/safety-and-health-materials/heat-stress
[7] See: World Gold Council, “Silence is Golden: A Report on the Exploitation of Artisanal Miners to Fund War, Terrorism and Organised Crime” 18 November 2024, https://www.gold.org/esg/artisanal-and-small-scale-gold-mining.