“Zama zama is like gambling, but the better part of gambling. If you go in the mine, you are sure that you may come up with something.”
These are the opening lines of the gripping 2022 documentary, We are Zama Zama, which follows migrants “eking a living in the depths of South Africa’s abandoned gold mines”.
The illegal practice has been described by CNN as possibly “the world’s worst job”, with miners having to contend with coffin-like claustrophobia, descending steep narrow tunnels using ragged rope and with no proper climbing equipment. Similarly, the tools used to extract the precious deposits from forgotten veins are just as rudimentary – well-worn mallets and chisels pound at rock under the dim glow of bicycle headlamps. Climbing up is an even tougher task than going down. In both directions, the risk of getting struck by dislodged basketball-sized boulders by fellow miners above is very real. Then there are the tunnel collapses to contend with. Deaths are common; camaraderie distracts from the extreme danger.
“Of course, I don’t like this job, and I am scared all the time,” Respect Moyo tells the news channel, “but there is nowhere else I can find work.”
Fatalities are not always caused by falls or falling debris, there are turf wars to contend with, too. In 2014, a rival gang stole gold and trapped around 200 zama zamas down an abandoned mine by blocking the exits. Some of the miners were rescued, but an unknown number perished in the darkness. It’s not uncommon for miners to be attacked while underground or robbed at gunpoint for their gold-bearing rocks – or, less common, diamonds – once they emerge from the blackness and into the blinding, dusty sunlight.
“I’m not stealing from somebody,” says Rogers ‘Bhekani’ Mumpande in the documentary. “I’m working for myself. I risk for my own reasons. Just, I’m stranded. That’s the only job I know, which I can do.”
Unsurprisingly, mining companies view zama zamas with contempt. The South Africa Chamber of Mines says that the migrant miners have cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars, with criminal networks often overseeing the operations and smuggling gold and gems to international buyers.
But zama zamas are usually desperate people. They have crossed borders only to find new horrors. The men mine, the women crush rocks by hand, and gangster overloads keep watch. If the falling rocks, the beatings, or the bullets don’t kill them, the toxic dust almost certainly will, one day.
“I’m not stealing from somebody,” says Rogers ‘Bhekani’ Mumpande in the documentary. “I’m working for myself. I risk for my own reasons. Just, I’m stranded. That’s the only job I know, which I can do.”
Earlier this year, zama zamas’ homes were burned to the ground by disgruntled locals in the Bushbuckridge municipality where tensions have been brewing for some time, with locals accusing the miners of taking over their towns. Then there are their gangster bosses.
“These people have bigger guns than those of the police,” community leader Thabang Molepo tells Johannesburg publication The Sowetan. “We are scared to go out at night.”
A former illegal miner revealed that he stopped going underground because of new groups bullying him into sharing his spoils.
The Covid pandemic and now rising living costs and political and economic uncertainty has meant that illegal mining activities have spilled over from South Africa’s 6,000-plus abandoned mines into ones that are operational. Zama zama numbers are on the rise.
“Africa’s f***ed up. We don’t have jobs, all we have is minerals – but they’re being looted by the West,” an unemployed mechanical engineer who didn’t want to be named, tells NPR. “This is our Africa. This is our land. These are our minerals.”
There is no literal translation of the term ‘zama zama’. It comes from a Zulu colloquial term that loosely means “trying your luck”.
