‘Illegal’ gold mining and the everyday in post-apartheid South Africa

Tapiwa Madimu

Review of African Political Economy, 2022, vol. 49, issue 173, 436-451

Abstract: This paper examines unregulated gold-mining activities prevalent at disused mines and decommissioned shafts at operating mines in post-apartheid South Africa. This kind of mining is deemed illegal by the government since it is outside the parameters of the country’s main mining legislation. The author uses the concept of ‘the everyday’ to examine the daily living patterns and work operations of unregulated miners (zama-zamas) to fully understand their real world, beyond what is peddled by the state, and to argue that unregulated mining activities are orderly and make a significant contribution to the livelihoods of thousands of people in South Africa and the subregion. A thorough examination of their daily work and leisure routines sheds more light on their actual world, which has till now been obscured by government and media reports that emphasise the ‘illegal’ and violent aspects while remaining mute on the positive elements.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056244.2022.2027750 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:49:y:2022:i:173:p:436-451

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2022.2027750

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().