In the Zulu language, "zama zama" means "those who take a chance." It is a fitting name for the tens of thousands of illegal artisanal miners who descend into South Africa's abandoned mine shafts each year, risking cave-ins, toxic gas, and gang violence for the possibility of extracting a few grams of gold. What began decades ago as a survival strategy for unemployed workers has metastasized into one of the country's most complex crises, a sprawling collision of poverty, organized crime, and governmental failure that now costs South Africa an estimated $3 billion annually in lost revenue.
The crisis came to a gruesome head in early 2025, when a months-long police siege at the disused Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein, North West Province, ended with at least 78 miners dead and 246 survivors pulled from the earth in skeletal condition. The tragedy, which drew international condemnation and calls for a judicial commission of inquiry, laid bare the human cost of a problem that defies easy solutions. It also forced a national reckoning: Can South Africa dismantle the criminal syndicates that profit from illegal mining without sacrificing the desperate laborers who do the digging?
Into those tunnels have flowed the country's economically desperate. South Africa's official unemployment rate hovers around 33 percent, among the highest in the world, and in mining communities where shafts have closed, the figure is far worse. Many zama zamas are former miners who lost their jobs during industry retrenchments and returned to the only work they know. Others are undocumented migrants from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and other neighboring countries, drawn by the promise of income in a region with few alternatives. At the Stilfontein rescue operation in January 2025, police recorded the nationalities of those extracted: 1,125 were Mozambican, 465 were Zimbabwean, 200 were from Lesotho, and just 26 were South African.
This demographic reality adds layers of complexity. Undocumented workers face what researchers have called "double illegality," their status as both unauthorized immigrants and unlicensed miners, driving them to avoid any contact with authorities. That isolation makes them easy prey for the syndicates that have come to dominate the trade.
Conditions underground are nightmarish. Miners work in shafts that can extend more than two kilometers below the surface, with no proper ventilation, no safety equipment, and no emergency evacuation routes. Food and water are being sold at enormously inflated prices. Turf wars between rival syndicates are common, and miners have been robbed, shot, and sealed into tunnels by competing groups. Human trafficking is a documented feature of the trade. During testimony before the South African Human Rights Commission in October 2025, police reported that most of the people who surfaced at Stilfontein were trafficking victims, and 27 were children.
The minerals extracted by these laborers feed a multibillion-rand black market. Industry estimates suggest that between 5 and 30 percent of South Africa's gold output is mined and traded illegally, with the majority smuggled to international markets through Dubai and neighboring countries. The Minerals Council South Africa has estimated annual losses in sales, taxes, and royalties at 21 billion rand, while government officials have placed the figure for 2024 as high as 60 billion rand.
The strategy proved catastrophic. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of miners were trapped in tunnels extending up to two kilometers below ground. Many could not physically reach the exits, which were kilometers apart underground. Community members and advocacy groups pleaded for an organized rescue, but the government initially refused. Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, the minister in the presidency, declared that authorities would "smoke them out." The remark drew fierce condemnation from civil rights organizations, who warned of impending mass casualties.
Months passed. Videos smuggled from inside the mine showed emaciated men surrounded by plastic-wrapped bodies. In November, a South African court ordered police to halt the blockade and allow rescue teams to enter. However, the government-ordered rescue did not begin until January 2025. When Mine Rescue Services finally descended into the shaft, they found 78 dead and extracted 246 survivors, many in critical condition. An independent pathologist confirmed that at least 20 of the dead had perished from starvation and dehydration. Civil society organizations accused the government of carrying out what they described as state-sponsored extermination.
The military deployment, later extended to the Eastern Cape at the direction of acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, represented a significant escalation. Ramaphosa framed it as a constitutional, time-limited operation focused on dismantling criminal networks rather than targeting individual miners. He outlined a strategy centered on intelligence consolidation, the identification of priority syndicates, and the deployment of multidisciplinary intervention teams. He also announced the recruitment of 5,500 additional police officers and the establishment of a National Illicit Economy Disruption Program incorporating data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Critics, however, questioned whether military intervention could succeed where policing had failed. Analysts warned that without simultaneous strengthening of investigative capacity, prosecutorial resources, and witness protection, the deployment risked treating organized crime as a visibility problem rather than a governance problem. Opposition leaders challenged the government to specify the cost, duration, and rules of engagement for the operation, and some cautioned that South Africa's history of military deployments in domestic policing had yielded mixed results at best.
Communities near active illegal mining sites face constant insecurity. Syndicate violence regularly extends beyond mine perimeters, with residents caught in turf wars, subjected to extortion, and victimized by property crime. Infrastructure damage, including the destruction of roads and water pipes from illicit tunneling and explosive use, compounds the hardship. Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, welcoming the military deployment in February 2026, described illegal mining as a criminal enterprise that threatens community safety, exploits vulnerable people, and causes extensive environmental damage.
Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe, testifying before the South African Human Rights Commission in February 2026, pushed back against conflating zama zama operations with legitimate artisanal mining, calling the former a component of broader organized economic crime. He announced that the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act was under review with the aim of formalizing artisanal mining while strengthening prohibitions on unlicensed mineral extraction. He did not, however, provide a timeline for the legislative changes.
The Institute for Security Studies and other policy organizations have urged South Africa to align its approach with international best practices, including due-diligence frameworks from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for conflict-affected areas. They argue that until the economic incentives driving illegal mining are addressed, through job creation, mine rehabilitation, and accessible licensing for small-scale operators, the syndicates will continue to recruit from an inexhaustible supply of desperate laborers.
The zama zama crisis sits at the intersection of nearly every fault line in South African society: unemployment, migration, corporate negligence, environmental degradation, and the limits of state authority. The Stilfontein disaster demonstrated that brute enforcement without humanitarian safeguards produces atrocity rather than order. The military deployment announced in 2026 signals an escalation in the government's response, but whether it will be paired with the structural reforms needed to address root causes remains an open and urgent question. For the thousands of men still working in the darkness below South Africa's abandoned mines, the stakes could not be higher.
The crisis came to a gruesome head in early 2025, when a months-long police siege at the disused Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein, North West Province, ended with at least 78 miners dead and 246 survivors pulled from the earth in skeletal condition. The tragedy, which drew international condemnation and calls for a judicial commission of inquiry, laid bare the human cost of a problem that defies easy solutions. It also forced a national reckoning: Can South Africa dismantle the criminal syndicates that profit from illegal mining without sacrificing the desperate laborers who do the digging?
An Economy of Abandoned Mines and Desperate Workers
South Africa was once the world's largest gold producer. That era is over. As global demand patterns shifted and as extraction costs climbed, hundreds of mines shut down, leaving behind more than 6,000 derelict and ownerless shafts scattered across the provinces of Gauteng, North West, Free State, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo. The companies that abandoned those mines rarely rehabilitated the land. The result is a vast network of accessible underground infrastructure, ripe for exploitation.Into those tunnels have flowed the country's economically desperate. South Africa's official unemployment rate hovers around 33 percent, among the highest in the world, and in mining communities where shafts have closed, the figure is far worse. Many zama zamas are former miners who lost their jobs during industry retrenchments and returned to the only work they know. Others are undocumented migrants from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and other neighboring countries, drawn by the promise of income in a region with few alternatives. At the Stilfontein rescue operation in January 2025, police recorded the nationalities of those extracted: 1,125 were Mozambican, 465 were Zimbabwean, 200 were from Lesotho, and just 26 were South African.
This demographic reality adds layers of complexity. Undocumented workers face what researchers have called "double illegality," their status as both unauthorized immigrants and unlicensed miners, driving them to avoid any contact with authorities. That isolation makes them easy prey for the syndicates that have come to dominate the trade.
The Syndicates: Criminal Empires Below the Surface
The popular image of the zama zama as a lone prospector with a headlamp and a pickaxe obscures a far darker reality. South Africa's illegal mining economy is controlled by sophisticated criminal syndicates that function as underground governments, complete with hierarchies, supply chains, and enforcement arms. The laborers who perform the physical extraction occupy the bottom of this pyramid. Above them sit armed overseers, brokers who facilitate the sale of raw minerals to international buyers, and kingpins who rarely set foot in a mine.Conditions underground are nightmarish. Miners work in shafts that can extend more than two kilometers below the surface, with no proper ventilation, no safety equipment, and no emergency evacuation routes. Food and water are being sold at enormously inflated prices. Turf wars between rival syndicates are common, and miners have been robbed, shot, and sealed into tunnels by competing groups. Human trafficking is a documented feature of the trade. During testimony before the South African Human Rights Commission in October 2025, police reported that most of the people who surfaced at Stilfontein were trafficking victims, and 27 were children.
The minerals extracted by these laborers feed a multibillion-rand black market. Industry estimates suggest that between 5 and 30 percent of South Africa's gold output is mined and traded illegally, with the majority smuggled to international markets through Dubai and neighboring countries. The Minerals Council South Africa has estimated annual losses in sales, taxes, and royalties at 21 billion rand, while government officials have placed the figure for 2024 as high as 60 billion rand.
The Stilfontein Disaster: A National Reckoning
The standoff at Stilfontein became a defining episode in South Africa's illegal mining crisis. The Buffelsfontein gold mine, once a major producer, ceased operations in 2013 and was subsequently occupied by zama zamas extracting remaining gold deposits from its deep, multilevel shaft network. In August 2024, as part of Operation Vala Umgodi, isiZulu for "close the hole", South African police surrounded the mine, sealed off exits, and cut off supplies of food, water, and medicine in an attempt to force miners to the surface for arrest.The strategy proved catastrophic. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of miners were trapped in tunnels extending up to two kilometers below ground. Many could not physically reach the exits, which were kilometers apart underground. Community members and advocacy groups pleaded for an organized rescue, but the government initially refused. Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, the minister in the presidency, declared that authorities would "smoke them out." The remark drew fierce condemnation from civil rights organizations, who warned of impending mass casualties.
Months passed. Videos smuggled from inside the mine showed emaciated men surrounded by plastic-wrapped bodies. In November, a South African court ordered police to halt the blockade and allow rescue teams to enter. However, the government-ordered rescue did not begin until January 2025. When Mine Rescue Services finally descended into the shaft, they found 78 dead and extracted 246 survivors, many in critical condition. An independent pathologist confirmed that at least 20 of the dead had perished from starvation and dehydration. Civil society organizations accused the government of carrying out what they described as state-sponsored extermination.
Military Deployment and the Government's Escalation
The Stilfontein tragedy intensified pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa's administration to formulate a coherent response to illegal mining, one that would go beyond the blunt-force tactics that had produced a humanitarian disaster. That response came during Ramaphosa's February 2026 State of the Nation Address, in which he declared organized crime the most immediate threat to South Africa's democracy and announced the deployment of the South African National Defence Force to support police in Gauteng and the Western Cape.The military deployment, later extended to the Eastern Cape at the direction of acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, represented a significant escalation. Ramaphosa framed it as a constitutional, time-limited operation focused on dismantling criminal networks rather than targeting individual miners. He outlined a strategy centered on intelligence consolidation, the identification of priority syndicates, and the deployment of multidisciplinary intervention teams. He also announced the recruitment of 5,500 additional police officers and the establishment of a National Illicit Economy Disruption Program incorporating data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Critics, however, questioned whether military intervention could succeed where policing had failed. Analysts warned that without simultaneous strengthening of investigative capacity, prosecutorial resources, and witness protection, the deployment risked treating organized crime as a visibility problem rather than a governance problem. Opposition leaders challenged the government to specify the cost, duration, and rules of engagement for the operation, and some cautioned that South Africa's history of military deployments in domestic policing had yielded mixed results at best.
Environmental Degradation and Community Harm
The damage inflicted by unregulated mining extends far beyond the shafts themselves. Environmental researchers have documented severe consequences, including acid mine drainage, soil contamination, uranium exposure, and the discharge of air pollutants from mine dumps. These effects threaten water systems and local ecosystems in ways that may take decades to remediate. In July 2023, 17 people in the Angelo informal settlement in Boksburg died after a suspected nitric oxide leak from a gas cylinder being recycled for use in an illegal mining operation, illustrating how mining-related hazards spill into residential areas.Communities near active illegal mining sites face constant insecurity. Syndicate violence regularly extends beyond mine perimeters, with residents caught in turf wars, subjected to extortion, and victimized by property crime. Infrastructure damage, including the destruction of roads and water pipes from illicit tunneling and explosive use, compounds the hardship. Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, welcoming the military deployment in February 2026, described illegal mining as a criminal enterprise that threatens community safety, exploits vulnerable people, and causes extensive environmental damage.
The Path Forward: Reform, Regulation, and Hard Choices
Amid the crackdowns, a parallel debate has emerged about whether South Africa should formalize artisanal and small-scale mining rather than simply criminalizing it. Nongovernmental organizations working with zama zamas argue that the enforcement-first approach is counterproductive, pushing miners deeper underground and further into the arms of criminal syndicates. They advocate for overhauling existing laws to create a regulated framework that would allow small-scale miners to operate legally, pay taxes, and work under safety protections.Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe, testifying before the South African Human Rights Commission in February 2026, pushed back against conflating zama zama operations with legitimate artisanal mining, calling the former a component of broader organized economic crime. He announced that the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act was under review with the aim of formalizing artisanal mining while strengthening prohibitions on unlicensed mineral extraction. He did not, however, provide a timeline for the legislative changes.
The Institute for Security Studies and other policy organizations have urged South Africa to align its approach with international best practices, including due-diligence frameworks from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for conflict-affected areas. They argue that until the economic incentives driving illegal mining are addressed, through job creation, mine rehabilitation, and accessible licensing for small-scale operators, the syndicates will continue to recruit from an inexhaustible supply of desperate laborers.
The zama zama crisis sits at the intersection of nearly every fault line in South African society: unemployment, migration, corporate negligence, environmental degradation, and the limits of state authority. The Stilfontein disaster demonstrated that brute enforcement without humanitarian safeguards produces atrocity rather than order. The military deployment announced in 2026 signals an escalation in the government's response, but whether it will be paired with the structural reforms needed to address root causes remains an open and urgent question. For the thousands of men still working in the darkness below South Africa's abandoned mines, the stakes could not be higher.
