Hundreds of illegal miners arrested after underground food and water supplies cut

At least 565 illegal gold miners — zama zamas — were arrested at the weekend in the North West town of Orkney after the police choked off their food and water supplies, forcing them to the surface.

The arrests were the latest made under Operation Vala Umgodi, which seeks to disrupt illegal mining at a time when companies such as Sibanye-Stillwater have recorded a spike in such activities, including direct attacks on mine operations and infrastructure against the backdrop of record gold prices.

Read more: Eskom sub-station powering Sibanye’s Kloof 4 shaft blown up, zama zamas suspected

“The Vala Umgodi task teams led by the SAPS and SANDF in North West are intensifying their operations and ensuring that illegal mining activities and operations are dealt a blow. As of 12:00 (midday) on Sunday, 03 November 2024, at least  565 illegal mine workers have resurfaced,” said the SA Police Service (SAPS) in a statement on Sunday.

In an earlier statement, the SAPS said the zama zamas were resurfacing “as a result of starvation and dehydration. SAPS and members of the SANDF blocked communities in and around these abandoned mining shifts in Orkney from delivering food parcels, water and necessities to these illegal miners. This act of stamping the authority of the state eventually forced these illegal miners to resurface.”

The strategy at play here can be summed up as “surrender or starve” and the SAPS said that as many as 1,000 zama zamas may have found themselves without food, water and other necessities.

Zama zamas ply their dangerous and illegal trade for weeks or months at a time underground and depend on local communities to provide them with sustenance at highly inflated prices. It is their lifeline, and if it is cut, there are no spaza shops underground.

According to mining industry and security sources, one of the first signs that a “shift change” has occurred — meaning that hundreds of zama zamas are surfacing and hundreds more are about to go down — is when the local shops run out of bread and bottled water.

Migrant labour system

“The majority of those that have been arrested are inclusive of South Africans, Mozambicans and Basotho nationals,” said the SAPS.

Most zama zamas hail from Lesotho and Mozambique, a direct consequence of the decline of the migrant labour system which for decades provided South Africa’s mining sector with a pliable workforce that was subjected to harsh exploitation.

Read more: How the twilight of SA’s migrant labour system spawned a social apocalypse

These are men whose fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers toiled in South Africa’s mines — for wages which stagnated or fell for decades until the 1970s — and employment opportunities remain scant in Lesotho and Mozambique.

There is an army that is willing to go underground to mine illicit gold and this weekend’s arrests are just the tip of an expanding iceberg.

“They are treating the symptoms, they are not treating the problem,” said a mine security analyst, who asked not to be named.

“The zamas know the police and the army cannot sustain their operation, and they have stockpiles underground. They send up the guys who are not completely essential and the essential guys will stay underground.

“The illegal miners can always make a plan to get other consignments underground. It also seems that no weapons have surfaced and the guys with the guns are still underground,” said the analyst.

Zama zamas target both abandoned and operating shafts, and profits from the trade must be surging as the price of gold has scaled record highs this year of more than $2,700 an ounce.

Read more: After the Bell, why is the gold price going nuts?

The government estimates the costs of illegal mining to the South African mining industry and the wider economy to be about R70-billion a year.

Much of the illegal gold is destined for refineries in places such as Dubai where it is washed in a massive laundromat operated by transnational crime networks.

As Pauli van Wyk has reported in this publication, search and seizure operations initiated by the SA Revenue Service against Zimbabwean Simon Rudland’s alleged gold and tobacco smuggling network have not sparked meaningful action from the Hawks or the National Prosecuting Authority.

Read more: Why are the Hawks and the NPA not acting on the gold and tobacco mafia?

This bodes ill for South Africa’s attempts to exit the Financial Action Task Force greylisting by June 2025. DM