Illegal mining clampdown in South Africa: treating desperate people like criminals is an injustice – legal scholar

By Tracy-Lynn

Illegal artisanal gold mining in South Africa is in the spotlight again. Under Operation Vala Umgodi (“plug the hole”), South African authorities have since December 2023 been trying to disrupt the illicit gold mining economy by cutting off water, food and other supplies to the miners working underground.

The operation is an attempt to “stamp the authority” of the state after a series of criminal incidents in 2021 forced the government to confront the illicit gold trade as a threat to national security.

In my view, the government’s approach, which sees all artisanal mining through a criminality lens, is inappropriate and won’t work. The government’s approach ignores the context in which artisanal mining occurs:

• local, national and regional structural poverty (poverty as a systemic rather than an individual issue) and unemployment that will ensure a constant flow of individuals willing to pursue artisanal mining as a livelihood strategy