MARK OLALDE
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South  Africa

A  journey  into  south  Africa's  mines,  the  lives  of  its  miners  and
the  energy-production  industries  fueling  Africa's  rapid  growth

By: Mark Olalde


Photo  of  the  Week  -  4

8/30/2015

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Sharp, sharp!

While some 6,000 abandoned mines exist across South Africa, few as fully embody the issues inherent in a failed system of mine closure quite like Blyvooruitzicht Mine in Gauteng. As the South African Human Rights Commission wrote recently in its report on unregulated artisanal mining: "[Blyvooruitzicht] is a mine that was being warehoused...and, as such, a closure plan was not being implemented. There is thus ambiguity around the life of the mine and it appears difficult to focus its enforcement strategies effectively."


Indeed, the head of security told me he would require 500 personnel if he were to properly protect the mine's remaining assets. Several hundred zama zamas now work in the mine after its closure left a community wondering what to do with its economic support suddenly gone.

Expect to hear more on this mine and others like it when I begin publishing stories soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this shot of equipment left scattered and waiting when the mine closed.

Cheers,
Mark
Picture
Machinery decays after being left abandoned at the Blyvooruitzicht Mine.
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Zama  Zamas:  South  Africa's  Underground  Black  Market

8/24/2015

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PictureMine entrance that slopes down into an abandoned mine and is used by zama zamas.
Sharp, sharp!

“It’s happening in the Northern Cape already. It’s happening in the Free State. It is happening in Mpumalanga. It is happening in Limpopo. It is happening in the North West, and it is happening in Gauteng, just to our knowledge. In all likelihood it is probably also happening in KwaZulu-Natal," Commissioner Janet Love of the South African Human Rights Commission
 asserted.

Last week, the Commission held a press conference to mark the publication of its investigation into "unregulated artisanal" mining around South Africa. As the commissioner acknowledged, there exist many names for the same issue, that of small-scale illegal mining activities. Their 76-page report outlined numerous facets of this issue: A dearth of academic research, international reach, threats to legal mining and its infrastructure, health and safety concerns, failed mine rehabilitation and much more.

The Commission estimated that between 8,000 and an unknown number north of 30,000 people work in this type of mining in South Africa alone. According to the Department of Health, just shy of 1 million ex-mineworkers live in the country. The "ex" often results from retrenchment or firing, not from choice. In a country with massive unemployment levels (refer to my former post of statistics) -- and with an issue in need of further research, as the Commission pointed out -- it would not be a stretch to imagine many of these former mineworkers returning to abandoned mines to make a living with the skills they possess. Further, a lack of regulation by the government and compliance by companies has led to thousands of abandoned, derelict or ownerless mines around the country, providing the perfect site for these mining activities.

PictureArtisanal miners processing ore in an informal settlement near an illegal mining operation.
As with any unregulated and illegal activity, however, artisanal mining propagates other dangerous variables such as criminal syndicates and violent clashes. In 2010, the government cited a statistic, which said the legal mining sector lost about R6 billion ($455+ million) every year through illegal mining. A factsheet published this year by the Chamber of Mines estimated that between 5-10 percent of annual gold mining is stolen product.

At the same time, stereotypes pervade the myth of zama zamas. They are believed to be all foreigners working illegally (in a country where all tuk shop owners are Pakistani, all criminals are Nigerian, all Zimbabweans are taking jobs, etc.....). Sordid details from the world of zama zamas -- family's living underground with the workers, the handling of mercury in the processing of ore, the cave-ins -- find their way into newspapers and serve to continue this dialogue.

Yet, there are those pushing for reforms to fix this system. As the Commission cited in its report, one potential solution is slowly bringing zama zamas into the realm of legality. Some researchers and politicians are championing this effort that would give illegal miners assistance in applying for permits to mine. The Commission even suggested turning over abandoned mines that are under the supervision of the government to these miners. 


A cooperative approach among mining companies, government departments, community groups and artisanal miners is undoubtedly needed to fully address this black market-industry, but any real solution continues to evade all interested parties.
Cheers,
Mark

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Photo  of  the  Week  -  3

8/21/2015

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Sharp, sharp!

This week's image is of an aluminum can -- of what appears to be Windhoek beer -- that has been eaten through by the acidity of the surrounding soil. I made this photograph next to the side of a busy road, where the ground is white from iron pyrite and other minerals and metals dumped as mining waste products.

According to AngloGold Ashanti -- the world's third-largest gold producer -- as well as academic studies, there exist 6,000 square kilometers of degraded soil in the Witwatersrand Basin near Johannesburg. This data comes from research completed in 2003, but many such statistics do not exist year-by-year because they are research funding-dependent.

However, the lack of proper remediation guarantees this soil is far from usable today, not to mention the 30,000 square kilometers in the region overlying polluted groundwater. In gold production, the amount of waste is 200,000X that of the final product. That means that to produce one standard size gold bar (12.4kg), rock equivalent to the weight of about 1,630 Hyundai Sonatas is produced as waste.

Cheers,
Mark
Picture
An aluminum can fares poorly against the soil's low pH.
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Photo  of  the  Week  -  2

8/17/2015

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Sharp, sharp!

The zama zamas eyed my racially diverse group suspiciously. They were engaged in an illegal and surprisingly organized mining operation on the border of Johannesburg and Soweto in a gold mine that was abandoned for all intents and purposes. In the picture, an unofficial zama zama supervisor proffers a piece of recently mined gold ore for viewing.

Zama seems to be one of those words that slips between languages, especially in South Africa, where the country's 11 official languages sometimes merge into a distinct South African slang. In Zulu, the word means try, and the miners -- at least the ones I met the day I took this picture -- were proud of their title: "We try! We try!"

Cheers,
Mark
Picture
A zama zama displays gold ore mined at a site near Johannesburg.
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The  Necessary  Environment

8/16/2015

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Picture
Map of mines around Johannesburg in the provinces of Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State and North West. -- data from the South African Mineral Deposits Database. Johannesburg was built on mining, and indeed a massive gold (Au) reef cuts through the region.
Sharp, sharp!

I am reporting from the mines that are currently abandoned, derelict and ownerless, but there is a much broader context explaining why this situation arose. The few interviews I have conducted with illegal miners so far illuminated this. They work to send remittance; they work because unemployment is rampant in South Africa yet astronomical in their home countries; or they work to pay for their children's schooling. It is evident that a specific environment is necessary to foster such a black market.

Their existence and that of other less-than-legal behavior brings crime, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, prostitution and numerous related issues. However, the act of arresting someone for a criminal behavior does little good -- if not some bad -- when broader issues are not addressed. To give my readers the beginning of that necessary context, I have listed 11 important statistics concerning life in South Africa. I included minimal editorializing to aid understanding of the numbers while allowing you to draw your own conclusions. Read on to learn more, and be on the lookout in the coming weeks for more information on the process of illegal mining, the legal issues of addressing it and much more.

Cheers,
Mark
Picture
Letters precariously hang onto the Baragwanath Transport Interchange and Traders Market, or simply, Bara. An important site in Soweto, it is maintained to what seems a specific level of disrepair.
24.3 percent -- Stated unemployment rate, reported by the government for 2014 Q4. However, 43 percent of the potential labor force, the population aged 15-64, is not seeking work. Unemployment in South Africa is the highest it has been in the past decade.

53.6 percent -- Youth unemployment, defined as 15-24-year-olds, in 2013, according to the World Bank.

Nearly 90 percent -- Amount of the country's electricity generated by coal-fired plants, according to the country's Department of Energy. According to the CIA, that number rises slightly above 90 percent with the addition of other fossil fuels. South Africa remains one of the world's largest coal producers, but much of the highest grade coal is exported, leaving power outages due to "load shedding."

8 percent -- The amount of the GDP from mining in 2015 Q1, according to government statistics. An additional unknown yet large percent of mining and quarrying comes illegally through "artisanal mining."

62.15 percent -- Percent of the vote won by the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's party, in the 2014 national elections, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa. Its rivals, the Democratic Alliance, received 22.23 percent, and the ANC-breakaway Economic Freedom Fighters won 6.35 percent. Another 10 parties earned enough votes to hold at least one seat in the National Assembly.

80.2 percent -- The percent of South African citizens classified who are "black," according to South African government statistics. Then, 8.8 percent are "coloured," 8.4 percent are "white" and 2.5 percent are "Indian/Asian." Race classifications still retain legacies of Apartheid.

57 years -- The life expectancy in South Africa as of 2013, according to the World Bank. This comes as a sharp contrast to 1995, the year after Democracy, when life expectancy was 61. In the mid-noughts, this dropped to 52 years, in large part due to HIV/AIDS and former president Thabo Mbeki's slow response to the disease as he questioned the links between the HIV virus and AIDS.

About 6.2 million -- The estimated number of adults living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa in 2013, according to the CIA. South Africa has more people living with the disease than any other country in the world. That is roughly 1 in 5 South African adults. Additionally, the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a successful HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment program pioneered by President George W. Bush, was meant to run out in 2008 and is being phased out currently.

10 percent -- The drop in percentage points of enrollment rates between primary and secondary education, according to the Department of Basic Education. About 99 percent of eligible-aged students are enrolled in primary school, but that number drops to about 89 percent for secondary education.
 
1.9 percent -- GDP growth in 2013, according to the World Bank. The economy contracted following the 2008 global market collapse, and projections show growth hovering at merely 2 percent over the next several years. South Africa holds the second largest economy in Africa after Nigeria, although measured per capita, South Africa is still solidly on top of the rankings.

4.5 percent -- The GDP growth in 2014 (4.2 percent in 2013) of sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank. Africa hosts some of the world's faster growing economies, and while South Africa is looked to as one of the continent's economic leaders, it has lagged behind in recent years.
Picture
Nelson Mandela's prison cell on Robben Island. Upon his release in 1990, he addressed a crowd of an estimated 100,000 people in Cape Town. "It is only through disciplined mass action that our victory can be assured," Mandela said.
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    Mark Olalde

    I was a freelance journalist, previously based in South Africa, where I reported on the related industries of mining and energy production.

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