Notes on Illegal and artisanal mining, Johannesburg
These notes are really stories about informal, ‘illegal’, or
‘artisanal’ miners in Johannesburg, South Africa. With the price of gold as high as it has
been, these informal miners mine and produce their own gold using extremely
simple techniques. They earn a
reasonable living from it.
Elliot Moyo, with whom I did this research, is my MA student at the University of Witwatersrand
This was the second visit to the gold mining area near
Roodeport. The artisanal mines are in a
heavily mined area that has been known as a gold producing area since the
original discovery of gold in the Johannesburg area. I was surprised that there
is still sufficient gold in the earth to reward teams of artisanal miners, but
at current gold prices, there clearly is still a great deal. Many teams of from
5 to 10 or more men a working this reef intensively and generating reasonable
livings from it.
The area is on the margin of Roodeport, a western suburb of
Johannesburg about 19 km from the city centre.
We knew from a previous trip that there were artisanal mines
in the area, but the first thing we noticed on that Sunday were the sacred
spaces or meeting grounds of many independent evangelical churches. Each was marked by a circle of stones. One
had a fire burning the centre of it, with poles marking the boundary.
There were considerable middens of ash nearby, so the fires
were a constant feature of this ritual landscape.
We walked across the open land with the ‘churches’ marked in
stones on the ground, and moved into a thin screen of bush. Almost immediately
we found ourselves at the entrance to a small mine, with broken rock and other
debris all around.
In the near distance, we saw at first a few human figures
standing quietly amongst the bushes, and then I noticed what looked like a pile
of blankets on a slight hillock, covering black bags that looked to be satchels
or backpacks of some sort. As we
watched, several fo the blankets got up and moved towards us. They were men
from Lesotho who worked these mines, and who had been resting or sleeping that
early Sunday morning on the small hillock piled with black bags. As we found later, the bags contained the
concentrated ore that they had mined. Each one must have held 20-30 kgs of
gold-rich earth.
Soon ten men surrounded us, a single team of miners who had
just emerged from the adit we had seen.
They were initially somewhat curious, and then began to be aggressive as
the enquired what we wanted. They thought that we must be gold buyers, and when
we began to explain that we were researchers from the university, they became
very sceptical. Understandably, they
said they had nothing to do with universities, and wanted nothing to do with us
unless we could give them a better price for their gold than they were getting,
and if we could buy it. Unfortunately,
we could do neither.
We had some serious explaining to do before they relaxed and
decided that we were not a threat. As I
sometimes do in such situations, while Elliot was talking, I greeted the others
warmly, and moved to stand as close as possible to the most dangerous looking
one in the group. He was dressed as a
local, and was not wearing the Lesotho blanket that all of the others were
wearing. I have found that by moving
close to such people, and including them in conversation, and touching them
when appropriate makes them less immediately dangerous, and in any case does
not allow them room to swing a stick or a bottle. The group quieted as we talked, and eventually
gave us numbers for further contact and most of them began to drift away.
One who appeared to be the youngest stayed near us, and
began to speak with me in English. His English was fluent and relaxed. He
clearly had fairly considerable education. I asked as we were leaving if I
could take some pictures of the mine adits that they had created and that
accessed the tunnels beneath. He guided us to a place where the sun shone down
the inclinded shaft so that the interior of the timbered adit could be glimpsed
in the winter morning sunlight. We took some pictures, and left.
5 July 2013
We made contact with the ‘team’ of miners through Elliot
Moyo’s clever social networking in the field.
He had noted that there were a number of small tradesmen on the margins
of the open and bushy area where we knew the mining was taking place. Several
women under a shade of sticks and cloth were selling sweets, vegetables and
cigarettes, among other small items.
Also there were several barbers who ran their electrical clippers from
truck batteries attached to converters.
These operations consisted of a small table set into the ground in the
centre of a piece of plastic fibre groundcloth, 2 x 2 metres square laid out on
the dry and dusty earth. The client sat
in a plastic chair, and those waiting sat on rough log benches arranged to the
side. Charlie was one of the barbers,
and spoke ‘township SeSotho’, but he could communicate with the miners from
Lesotho in more-or-less common-ground SeSotho, and Elliot could communicate
with him. He also spoke English, so I could talk with him. Elliot worked out quickly that a barber in
this position would certainly have many illegal/artisanal miners as clients,
and might well also be an occasional miner himself. This proved to be true.
On the previous trip to the area, on Sunday, 30 June, we had
discovered another team of miners from Lesotho. As an ethnic and national group
they stand out because of the heavy blankets that they wear over their
shoulders. These drape in a straight
up-and-down fashion from their shoulders, as they use their left hand to hold
them together at the top, with the help of a large safety pin, and often carry
a stout wooden stick or stave in their right hand. As the blankets drape from
shoulder to below the knees, and cover the arms entirely, they give the image
of stark standing statues with little clothing or personality showing beneath
the enveloping blanket. Some wear gold
earrings, and few have beads on their wrists or around their necks. All wear
hats, mostly dense, large knitted ‘watch caps’ or ‘beanies’, or open-faced
balaclavas folded up and worn on top of the head, or sometimes pulled down
tocover the back of the head and the neck.
With the blankets pulled up to the chin, only a small portion of the
face is showing. This is the mode in
which these miners greet strangers—as we were—for the first time, revealing
almost nothing of their dress, size, or appearance, apart from the patterns of
the blanket at the distinctive hats.
Each person’s hat and blanket is distinctive while concealing what lies
beneath. One man of the first group,
however, was wearing a nylon jacket and a black baseball cap. He was distinctive not only in dress, but
because he also appeared to be the most aggressive. His dress was standard ‘South African’
township style for unemployed young men.
He was only distinctive in the group of ten blanketed Sotho men.
We had exchanged contact numbers with these men on the first
visit, and Elliot was able to discuss the youngest English-speaking one the
possibility of meeting for an interview at a neutral place. Several had agreed. Just before the meeting,
however, they had cancelled saying that they were going underground into the
mines for the next four or five days, and would not be able to meet us. Charlie the barber was able to provide a link
to another group of miners, and we were able to interview them on this Friday.
We met Charlie by his place of work beside the road into
Roodeport. He got into the car and we
turned right into Main Reef Road, then a kilometre or so west to a place called
Matholaville. Matholaville was a shack
settlement, or informal urban settlement that seemed to house mainly miners
from both formal and informal mining sectors.
Charlie pointed out one man that he knew. He had been buying food in the settlement to
take to his mining team. We waited as
Charlie got out of the car and walked back to the main road to meet with three
miners in their long blankets.
They joined us in the car, and we returned to Roodeport
after a short discussion of where they would like to go to talk. They chose a
local KFC. It was extremely noisy. They wanted to eat in the car, but as we had four
men packed into the back seat, there was just not enough room. The smell of woodsmoke and well-used clothing
was already quite strong, and KFC fried chicken would have added an extra
unnecessary pong. They were embarrassed
about their blankets, and started to take them off. Elliot told them that they
should be proud of their identity, and to leave them on. The young urban crowd
in the restaurant did turn to look at them as they were the only clearly
‘rural’ people in the shop. We got a
table and some chicken and started to talk.
They emphasized the knowledge that brought to the task. I
asked then how they learned and they said, ‘from our brothers’. By this they meant mostly other men from
Lesotho who have long been central to the mining industry, especially on the
Reef.
The three men were aged 28, 21 and 29. They were part of a five-man team, they said.
They all came from Lesotho. The 28 year old was the uncle (father’s brother) of
the older 29 year old, while the 21 year old was his ‘brother in law’, that is,
his sister was married to someone else in his family. They were all from the same village in
Lesotho, a village that had supplied many men to the formal mines in the
past. The other two members of the team
were also related in some way to the others.
They did not feel that ‘ethnicity or national origin was a factor, but
only the ability to communicate freely and easily in their home language
underground.
As the interview progressed it was clear that there were a
number of linguistic differences.
Charlie’s SeSotho came closest to theirs, but even so questions had to
be repeated and answers discussed and carefully translated. Elliot spoke Tswana, and was able to ask
questions, but could not understand the answers, so he referred to Charlie
often. The miners had only a few words
of English. With the complex mix of languages in Johannesburg, it was clear
that easy and clear communication would be important underground.
Many of the teams come from Lesotho, but there are also from
‘Mugabe’s place’ (Zimbabwe) and from South Africa.
A team works together through the whole production cycle
from mining to production of the finished gold.
Teams range up to 10, but they said that any team large than that soon
dissolved as the result to fighting amongst the members. They felt that they could use a few more men,
and that the average size of a team was 6 to 7 men.
Typically teams shift their membership over time. This team had just returned in June from
Lesotho after what they described as a big sale after a successful run of
mining in November. They now had two new
members from Lesotho. Members of teams
come and go as other family matters or other jobs take them away from the
team.
They do not wear any special protective equipment, not even
helmets. Plastic helmets are cheap and widely available, but they prefer their
thick knitted caps which they say is protection enough from bumping heads on
the rock ceilings of the tunnels. They
wear a two-piece ordinary workman’s clothing, with gumboots. They claim that it is very rare to get
injured. There were no scars or other evidence
of injuries on their faces or hands.
They felt that there was much more danger arising from fights with other
miners, both above ground and in the mine. Sometimes fights break out
underground over who has discovered a good ‘belt’ (vein) and who has the right
to mine it, and there are violent disputes sometimes after leaving the mine.
If each team keeps to themselves, however, fighting is
minimized.
I asked them how they find gold. I suggested that they might
‘listen’ to the rock, or to ‘spirit guides’ of some sort, as the old Cornish
miners used to do. They said that some
did, but others did not. They noted that
sometimes they could hear other miners working the same vein in neighbouring
workings. Sometimes tunnels cross each
other, and they can hear hammers from other teams.
For them, they were clear that they relied on their own
knowledge and experience. The whole body
is aware of the mine and the rock all around as they dig and tunnel, and a ‘lot
of observation is involved’. They look
at the rock carefully, and check its gold value by crushing samples and washing
it on a dinner plate that they carry with them.
They were clear about not using muti. I asked them if they were
Christian, and the ‘uncle’ (28 y. o.) pulled out a rosary in fluorescent white
plastic that he wore around his neck. They
were all Catholic.
The youngest said that he ‘believes in his mind’, that is,
that he relies on his own senses, knowledge, experience and intelligence to
stay safe and to find gold. He said he
did not believe in ‘rock language’, although others did.
The tool kit is simple. It consists of a spade, pick,
chisel, hammer, plastic bucket, a bowl, plate and towel.
They begin the process of purifying the gold ore
underground. Sometimes, however, the ore
may be brough to the surface to process. In fact, we had seen up to 50 people
along the Main Reef Road processing gold ore only slightly obscured from
passing traffic by a thin screen of bush.
Unless one knew what they were doing, however, it would not have been
clear to any passing motorists what they were up to.
There are two ‘processes’.
One is the ‘towel’ method, and the other is the ‘belt’ method. The ‘belt’ method is not really a method at
all, but simply involves visually sorting out rich gold bearing rock from the
waste. The rich veins, or ‘belts’,
contain visible gold, and can be sorted visually by hand and concentrated for
later processing by the towel method. Quick assays of the gold value of the ore
are done by crushing a sample and washing it, or ‘panning’ it on the plate. High-grade ore collected in this way is taken
to the surface in this form.
For this an ordinary terry-cloth cotton towel is laid on a
ramp of earth built up out of rock and sand.
A plastic sheet is placed over this, and the towel is laid down on this. The ore is ground by pounding it with harder
rock to the consistency of fine sand.
The sand is placed into a plastic bowl that has been pierced with many
small holes, and water is poured through it using the bucket. The sand is stirred and the heavier gold
falls through the sieve made from the bowl onto the towel on the
plastic-sheathed ramp. As the water and
gold bearing sand is washed down the towel, the gold clings to the towel and is
captured. Excess sand and water run down
to the bottom of the ramp and run off as waste.
Periodically, the towel is ‘washed’ in the bucket, and a find gold
powder accumulates at the bottom. This
is collected, and taken to the surface as the primary product of the mine.
On the surface, the powdered ores are put through another
sieve and towel process, and then mixed with mercury to form an amalgam with
the gold. The Hg-Au amalgam is formed
into pellets that are wrapped tightly in the fabric from an umbrella. The nylon fabric provides a final sieve. This is squeezed, much as the lees of beer
brewing a squeezed through the beer strainer. Some of the excess mercury is
forced out of the mixture in this way and is collected to be used again. The final product of this method is a hard
ball of mercury-gold amalgam. This is
finally ‘burnt’ with an oxy-acetylene cutting torch to drive off the mercury,
leaving pure gold nuggets behind.
The gold purified in this manner is then ready to sell.
Pure gold is then sold to local ‘agents’ or sometimes to
larger buyers. “A white guy in
Johannesburg” is one such buyer. He is
trusted. They bring their gold to him, he weighs it, and gives them cash in
return. They did not know at what rate of Rand per gram he paid them, but they
said they trusted him not to cheat them.
All of the local agents that they sold smaller amounts of
gold to were local South Africans who lived in the shacks and townships in the
immediate neighbourhood. They said that
they had never dealt with foreign buyers or agents, such as Chinese,
Zimbabwean, Pakistani, or others.
They did not reckon their profits in months, or weeks, but
in processing cycles. Their team carried
the entire process through from mining the ore to final sale of the purified
gold. Each cycle of gold production took
from two weeks to a month or more. This involved getting into the mine, mining
the ore, bringing the concentrated ore to the surface, and then final
processing and sale. At best they
reported they could earn ‘around R70,000’ ( US $6800 exchange rates of early
July). Sometimes it is less.
The funds from the sale a divided among the group.
