Nothing new in dark tunnels of the gold mines

There is nothing new about the secretive underworld in which zama zamas toil in the depths of abandoned mines or the brutality of the system in which these men work.

“Many men come as young boys and are recruited to SA by force. They’ve been made to understand they’ll be making money in SA, working on a mine.”

That was Marcel van der Watt, criminologist and director of the Research Institute at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in Washington DC, speaking about zama zamas on Radio 702.

Van der Watt spoke of human traffickers coming from Mozambique in minibus taxis laden with dozens of young men, who believed they were off to work on the gold mines of the fabled City of Gold.

Perhaps they remember stories of grandfathers or great-grandfathers leaving to work on the mines, coming home maybe once or twice a year, if at all, with money and goods that must have glistered like the holy grail itself.

Maybe their grandfathers did not live in abandoned tunnels for months at a time or die in underground gunfights with rival gangs. But this story of exploitation is hardly different from that of young men travelling in padlocked freight cars or crammed into the  bellies of seatless transport aircraft hired by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) to bring cheap labour from neighbouring countries.

Perhaps the zama zamas, whose treasure is the mining companies’ trash, were an inevitability — the law of unintended consequences come back to haunt the besieged (former) gold towns of West Village, Kagiso, Stilfontein, Blyvooruitzicht ...

That the zama zamas may even enjoy the protection of gang masters with high-level political muscle will come as no surprise. For ’twas ever thus.