In cases where a relationship emerges between mining companies and artisanal miners, it is tense. This poses a challenge for both mining companies and artisanal miners. This challenge is mostly a consequence of mining companies’ stance towards artisanal miners. When criminalising unregulated artisanal mining over and over, it comes as no surprise that relationships between the two sectors have broken down. The following statements show that in some cases no relationship exists and if one does, it is unhealthy.
Our relationship in South Africa with the illegal miners is obviously not a good one, for one simple reason because there is no interaction between the companies and the actual illegal miners. – Bruce, vice president of sustainable development at a mine.
Mark, a key informant, had the following to say:
Tense. Once again, it's that, it's that the tension that's at play, where mining companies have to manage their footprints and their mining boundaries under the parameters of their mining license. They have to comply with mining regulation, health and safety. If you do a study on those regulations, you will clearly deduce that substantial penalties are enforceable on mining companies
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that particularly break mine health and safety. And so much so that the CEOs or General Managers can be locked up and put in prison where there's negligence, where it's proven they were negligent, or where they have not adhered to those regulations and the directors of these companies can be sued and prosecuted in their personal capacity. So, the ramifications are significant. Remember we're not only talking about decommissioned mining sites or closed mines. We're talking in many instances active mines where artisanal mining is conflicting with active mining.
The last statement indicates that mining companies run a risk when Zama Zama mining takes place on operating mine sites. Managing these risks introduces the idea of risk management. Literature on the motivations for mining companies to properly engage with the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector ranges, but risk mitigation is certainly one of them and was also discussed in Chapter Two. As pointed out in Chapter Two, mining companies need to decide if they are going to treat the issue of unregulated artisanal mining as a security or social issue. In the South African context, risk is currently being managed by the deployment of security forces, thus treating the matter as a security issue. This contributes to an unhealthy relationship between the two sectors. In the end, a destructive cycle is being created where criminalisation and unhealthy relationships are continuously being fed by each other. To break this cycle, risk management should be approached differently and in a more humane way.
Risk management that involves proper engagement with artisanal miners stands a better chance to create a healthier relationship. Such an approach will not cause a tremendous breakdown in the relationship. It might even create a space for co-existence in some cases. Important to note is that these challenges do not exist in isolation. They flow over to mining communities too – ultimately threatening the social licence to operate.
The challenges that were uncovered during this research around unregulated artisanal mining contributes to a deeper understanding of artisanal mining in South Africa. These empirical findings confirm the highly unsafe and unhealthy conditions faced by Zama
Zama miners. A finding of particular significance is the risk that mining companies face
in terms of unregulated artisanal miners’ health and safety. This insight gained underlines the interconnectedness of these two sectors. This new understanding should help mining companies to improve their approaches towards risk management.
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To conclude, these findings suggest that inadequate policy and regulatory frameworks are the biggest challenges faced by Zama Zamas. The miners are deemed unlawful and can rarely escape this cycle and remain trapped. Inadequate policy gives rise to other challenges such as expropriation and exploitation and health and safety issues faced by the miners. It is also through the label of illegality that the challenging relationship between the miners and mines transpire. Therefore, it can be argued that this overall lack of access to institutional, financial and technical support limits the sustainability of the sector. Policy around ASM in African countries are seldom adequately supportive. Polices lack financial provision, environmental information and an overall lack of support in terms of skills provision for the miners (SAHRC 2015: 25). In the South African context, the provision of technical, financial and institutional support can turn unregulated artisanal miners into small-scale miners. Such initiatives can form part of the mines local economic development (LED) programmes and may also be added to the Broad-Based
Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBBE) scorecard. Sound LED initiatives can count
towards scoring mining companies points on enterprise development. When such initiatives are set up correctly it can also realise the requirements of the Mining Charter III in terms of enterprise development. Sound enterprise development has the potential to address issues such as unemployment and poverty, thus contributing to the economic growth of the country.
As in line with research objective a and b, the profile and challenges of unregulated artisanal mining were discussed up until now. This provides insight into the internal mechanisms of the sector. Research objective c aims to provide an understanding of what drives the sector. By examining these drivers, a better understanding is formed of how one can go about addressing the matter through a mining company’s corporate responsibility. This is done by examining the empirical data and by linking the findings back to corporate social responsibility’s position in the mining sector. The drivers are discussed in the next section and are explored alongside the role of mining companies in South Africa.