Despite massive Police operations at Stilfontein and Sabie, South Africa’s zama zama illegal mining empire seems still to be in place, based on an oppressive yet highly-efficient system.

Zama zamas have ensnared recruits from Mozambique, deceived by the false promise of instant riches, says the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria.

ISS Intelligence and Terrorism expert Wilie Els told ProtectionWeb that the only way out of the zama zama conundrum is for South African Police Minister Senzo Mchunu to convene a national dialogue of all stakeholders.

In the meantime, the complex and well-oiled zama zama machine continues and is now focusing on a fresh crop of recruits identified and selected from increasing numbers of economic refugees crossing the border from Mozambique, says Els.

False promises are driven home initially not by the rifle-butts, starvation and money-withholding tactics of elite enforcers underground but by beguiling recruitment methods well-versed in persuasion tactics.

ProtectionWeb can now reveal previously-unknown zama zama organisation, logistics, recruitment and enforcement techniques. These shed new light on how zama zamas recruit, organise, operate and exploit extensive corruption not only with State-embedded actors, but also a symbiotic relationship with legal miners that provides logistic support underground and even moves their illegal product through legal channels.

Far from being in disarray due to on-gong high-profile Police action, zama zamas are in reality merely transfixing law enforcement with rear-guard actions whilst recruitment and business continue elsewhere.

With roots in land-locked Lesotho and apartheid’s mining migrant labour system, criminal gangs from Lesotho have long sown terror and violence and marketed and managed the modern slavery of the zama zamas throughout Southern Africa.

They rule a vast slave-driven under-empire and “Glittering Axis” of illegal mining and trading radiating from Lesotho through the adjacent goldfields of South Africa’s central Free State Province and beyond.

This extends to creating and managing a lucrative informal economy centred on supplying zama zamas with food, sex workers, medicine and other needs – loaves of bread compacted to 10% of their original size and duct-taped to the bodies of legal miner “food mules” and delivered underground at 20 to 30 times the original price – and often through normal mining channels.

This is achieved by structuring and managing exactly as would be expected of the perfect intelligence organisation – compartmentalisation, rigid and ruthless social control, and insidious deception and blending of operations with legitimate mining persons and activities, says Els.

And that’s only at operational level – State-embedded actors also create an enabling environment for illegal mining and porous policing and prosecution by exerting influence.

ProtectionWeb can reveal the flexible yet effective structures and enforcement techniques utilised to manage zama zama operations, down to their three basic operational levels and leadership terms used:

• At the national apex of the R47-billion per annum South African illegal gold industry stand the Nthlekos – crime overlords and kingpins with State and industry-embedded figures supporting them.
• Then more or less approximating provincial borders are the Nuni – those who coordinate intelligence and plan operations broadly in terms of focus and setting production quotas.
• At grass-roots operational level are the actual operators and enforcers known as Mackenzies.

Mackenzies operate in devolved and insulated cell-structures, organising weapons, deciding which gangs to use as enforcers, sourcing guns and weapons and organising logistics.

Mackenzies control actual operations of the zama zamas underground, ruthlessly enforcing set production quotas, enforcing discipline in a mix of direct violence and applying Famo music culture underground in resilience-building actions.