An area of illegal mining activity was raided by the Brazilian Federal Police in the eastern Amazon on Jan. 17, where their precarious installations and housing, as well as their equipment, were destroyed. The fight against illegal mining, especially in indigenous territories, intensified after a new tragedy of deaths of Yanomami indigenous people caused by encroaching garimpeiros or informal miners became headline news. CREDIT: Federal Police

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 29 2024 (IPS)

Artisanal mining, or “garimpo” as it is known in Brazil, has returned to the headlines as a factor in the deaths of Yanomami indigenous people, whose territory in the extreme north of Brazil suffers constant encroachment by miners, which has intensified in recent years.

In the first few days of the year, Yanomami spokespersons denounced new invasions of their land and the suspension of health services, in addition to the violence committed by miners or “garimpeiros”, which coincided with the fact that the military withdrew from areas they were protecting.

Furthermore, the media published new photos of extremely malnourished children. In response, the government promised to establish permanent posts of health care and protection in the indigenous territory.

“But what they are involved in there is not garimpo but illegal and inhumane mining practices,” said Gilson Camboim, president of the Peixoto River Valley Garimpeiros Cooperative (Coogavepe), which defends the activity as environmentally and socially sustainable when properly carried out.

“Garimpo is mining recognized by the Brazilian constitution, with its own legislation, which pays taxes, is practiced with an environmental license and respects the laws, employs many workers, strengthens the economy and distributes income,” he told IPS by telephone from the headquarters of his cooperative in Peixoto de Azevedo, a town of 33,000 people in the northern state of Mato Grosso.

Coogavepe was founded in 2008 with 23 members. Today it has 7,000 members and seeks to promote legal garimpo and environmental practices, such as the restoration of areas degraded by mining.

But it is difficult to salvage the reputation of this legal part of an activity whose damage is demonstrated by photos of emaciated children and families decimated by hunger and malaria, because the encroachment of miners pollutes rivers, kills fish and introduces diseases to which indigenous people are vulnerable because they have not developed immune defenses.

Garimpeiros and indigenous deaths

The humanitarian tragedy among the Yanomami people became big news in January 2023 when Sumaúma, an Amazonian online media outlet, denounced the deaths of 570 children under five years of age, due to malnutrition and preventable diseases, during the far-right government of former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office on Jan. 1, 2023, visited Yanomami territory and mobilized his government to care for the sick and expel illegal miners, destroying their equipment and camps. But a year later, the resumption of mining activity and a resurgence of hunger and deaths were reported.

Moreover, the entire extractivist sector has a terrible reputation due to tragedies caused by industrial mining. Two tailings dams broke in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais in 2015 and 2019, killing 289 people and muddying an 853-kilometer-long river and a 510-kilometer-long river.

Brazil is the world’s second largest producer of iron ore, following Australia. Iron ore is the main focus of industrial mining in the country.

Garimpo is mainly dedicated to gold, and accounts for 86 percent of its production. Garimpeiros also produce cassiterite (the mineral from which tin ore is extracted) and precious stones, such as emeralds and diamonds. Its major expansion, many decades ago, was along rivers in the Amazon jungle, to the detriment of indigenous peoples and tropical forests.

Indigenous people protest in the state of Roraima in northern Brazil against the invasion of Yanomami territory by garimpeiros or artisanal miners, who often practice illegally. CREDIT: Alberto César Araújo / Amazônia Real

Threat to the environment and health

Currently, 97.7 percent of the area occupied in Brazil by artisanal mining is in the Amazon rainforest, where it reaches 101,100 hectares, according to MapBiomas, a project launched by non-governmental organizations, universities and technology companies to monitor Brazilian biomes using satellite images and other data sources.

The production of gold uses mercury, which has contaminated many Amazonian rivers and a large part of their riverside population, including indigenous groups, such as the Munduruku people, who live in the basin of the Tapajós River, one of the great tributaries of the Amazon with an extension of 2,700 kilometers.

Garimpo dumps about 150 tons of mercury in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest every year, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates. The fear is that the tragedy of Minamata, the Japanese city where mercury dumped by a chemical industry in the mid-20th century killed about 900 people and caused neurological damage in tens of thousands, may be repeated here.

Brazil produced 94.6 tons of gold in 2022, according to the National Mining Agency. But the way it is extracted varies greatly, based mainly on informal mining, of which illegal mining makes up an unknown percentage.

Three prices govern this production, according to Armin Mathis, a professor at the Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazónicos of the Federal University of Pará, who lives in Belém, the capital of this Amazonian state, with 1.3 million inhabitants.

The price of gold in Brazil; the price of diesel, which represents a third of the cost of gold mining; and the cost of labor are the three elements that determine whether the garimpo business is profitable, the German-born PhD in political science, who has been studying this activity since he arrived in Brazil in 1987, explained to IPS from Belém.

This mining was in fact artisanal, but it began to use machines, especially the backhoe, in the 1980s, which is why diesel increased its costs. And unemployment and periods of economic recession, in the 1980s and in 2015-2016, made garimpo more attractive.

In those periods and the following years, invasions of Yanomami territory, which also extends through the state of Amazonas in southwestern Venezuela, became more massive and aggressive. But the consequences for the native people living in vast areas of the rainforest only become news on some occasions, like now.

Small airplanes seized by police and environmental authorities were at the service of illegal miners in Roraima, an Amazonian state in the extreme north of Brazil. This is where most of the Yanomami Indians live, currently the main victims of illegal, mechanized mining. CREDIT: Federal Police

From artisanal to mechanization

Mechanization has restructured the activity. Machines are expensive and require financiers. Entrepreneurs have emerged to manage the now more complex operations, as well as others who only own and rent out the equipment.

In addition, the owners of small airplanes that supply the mining areas and facilitate the trade of the extracted gold became more powerful. The hierarchy of the business has expanded.

“We must differentiate between garimpo and the garimpeiros. This is not a rhetorical distinction. The garimpeiro, who works directly in the extraction of gold, is more a victim than a perpetrator of illegal, predatory and criminal mining. The person responsible lives far away and gets rich by exploiting workers in slavery-like labor relations,” observed Mauricio Torres, a geographer and professor at the Federal University of Pará.

“The garimpeiro, depicted as a criminal by the media, pays for the damage,” he told IPS by telephone from Belém.

The workers recognize that they are exploited, but feel that they are a partner of the garimpo owner, as they earn a percentage of the gold obtained. They work hard because the more they work, the more they earn.

A large part of the garimpeiros along the Tapajós River, where this kind of mining has been practiced since the middle of the last century, are actually landless peasant farmers who supplement their income in the garimpo business, when agriculture or fishing does not provide what they need to support their families, Torres explained.

Therefore, agrarian reform and other government initiatives that offer sufficient income to this population could reduce the pressure of the garimpo on the environment in the Amazon rainforest, which affects the region’s indigenous and traditional peoples, he said.

The situation of the garimpeiros also differs according to the areas where they work in the Amazon jungle, Mathis pointed out. In the Tapajós River, where the activity has been taking place for a longer period of time and is already legal in large part, coexistence is better with the indigenous Munduruku people, some of whom also became garimpeiros.

In Roraima, a state in the extreme north on the border with Venezuela and Guyana, where a large part of the territory is made up of indigenous reserves, illegal mining is widespread and includes the more or less violent invasion of Yanomami lands.

On the other hand, as the local economy depends on gold, the population’s support for garimpo, even illegal and more invasive practices, is broader than elsewhere. There, former president Bolsonaro, a supporter of garimpo, won 76 percent of the votes in the 2022 runoff election in which he was defeated by Lula.

Another component that aggravates the violence surrounding garimpo and, therefore, the crackdown on the activity, is the expansion of drug trafficking in the Amazon rainforest. The informality of the mining industry has facilitated its relationship with organized crime, whether in the drug trade or money laundering, said Mathis from Belém.

Dorcas Makaza-Kanyimo (left), acting director of Women and Law in Southern Africa, participates in a workshop on women in the extractives industry in Hwange, Zimbabwe. Credit: Sally Nyakanyanga/IPS

By Sally Nyakanyanga
HARARE, Mar 8 2018 (IPS)

Tapiwa Moyo, 40, religiously leaves her home each day when the first cock crows and joins a throng of women who have taken up artisanal mining in her community.

Moyo spends the better part of her day tramping to and fro, carrying sacks on her back packed with river sand that she sifts through in hope of finding flecks of gold. Working with their limbs in muddy water up to the knees, the women see small-scale mining as a path to improve their livelihoods and bolster scanty family incomes.“As a country, it’s imperative that we have a mining policy that is responsive to women’s needs in the sector." --Dorcas Makaza-Kanyimo

“As an unemployed single mother, I’m left with no choice but to find means to fend for my five children who are of school-going age. I have no one to cover my back, as such I joined other women in artisanal mining for a living,” says Moyo.

Mining in Zimbabwe has been largely a men’s affair, but women are slowly making inroads in the sector. Despite the rudimentary methods still used in artisanal mining, women are now wielding picks and shovels alongside men as they scavenge for valuable minerals.

But Dorcas Makaza-Kanyimo, the acting director for Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA), Zimbabwe, says more must be done to pave the way for real gender equality in the sector.

“There is need for reduction of costs of mining claims, provision of suitable loan facilities for women to be able to access capital to start mining thereby enabling them to purchase the needed mechanized equipment for their mining operations,” Makaza-Kanyimo told IPS.

Women comprise 11-15 percent of the estimated 50,000 small-scalers miners in the country. A 2017 report entitled Women’s Economic Empowerment in SSB – Recommendations for the Mining Sector, reveals that though the mining sector remains a key driver to economic growth and transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, rarely has it delivered benefits in reducing poverty and improving livelihoods for the majority of the population.

“Women in particular have struggled to avail themselves of the benefits and opportunities of large-scale mining operations and often disproportionately suffer from the negative impacts of the industry,” the study says.

Dorcas Makaza-Kanyimo agrees. “The Ministry of Mines should run programs that promote women in mining in terms of allocating machines, and allow women to access these loans with minimum requirements in terms of collateral as women don’t have the collateral required by banks,” she told IPS.

WLSA Zimbabwe provides education and outreach to ensure women in the extractives industry understand the legal framework.

“We have been supporting these women on how one can get a legal mining claim, as we know most women are mining illegally as artisanal miners and operating in an unregulated environment. This makes women vulnerable as a lot of things happen in that environment – women can experience violence, rape, be elbowed out by men and cheated by gold buyers when they try to sell their gold,” says Makaza-Kanyimo.

Currently, Zimbabwe is still governed by the 1961 Mines and Mineral Act, which was enacted during the colonial era. Calls are now mounting to ensure the new mining statutes are more gender responsive.

The country is going through a reform process called the Mines and Mineral Bill, which is now in parliament and will be up for its second reading on March 12. However, groups such as WLSA Zimbabwe say it should explicitly provide for women to get an equal share of mining claims.

“As women miners, we need a friendly environment, particularly revising the costs of owning a mining claim. We are unable to own these mining claims because we don’t have the means – that’s why you find many women in [unregulated] artisanal mining,” says Moyo.

As the world celebrates International Women’s Day under the theme “The Time is Now – Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women’s Lives,” gender-responsive policies for women in the extractives industry could play an important role in their economic empowerment and development.

In Africa, where most countries are endowed with rich mineral resources, women remain largely impoverished and their participation in the extractives sector is marginal. Though no countries have a fully gender-balanced approach, South Africa has been praised as a progressive example – and one Zimbabwe should examine as it creates its own comprehensive policy.

“Issues of gender are very much included in the South Africa mining charter, although they still have their challenges on implementation of certain aspects in terms of their mining law, but they have made great strides in terms of achieving gender equality,” Makaza-Kanyimo added.

The majority of women in engage in small-scale artisanal mining, and WLSA Zimbabwe notes that South Africa’s law provides for mining syndicates and consortiums so groups can buy mining claims together.

As such, women miners like the Mtandazo Women Miners Association in Gwanda, Matebeleland North have recorded some success stories. Sithembile Ndhlovu, the founder, has since bought three mining claims of her own. These women have also been encouraging each other by forming savings and loan groups in order to raise money to buy mining claims.

“I was seeing them (men) managing to drive their own cars and feeding their families. I was going to work every day, but could see that the money was not sustaining me and my family,” says Ndhlovu.

The Mtandazo Women Miners Association is made up of 32 small-scale miners and its members have received training on the fundamentals of mining from the Zimbabwe School of Mines. Women miners are strongly encouraged to register and regularise their mining operations, which enables them to have access to loans and possibly equipment that opens up new opportunities.

“As a country, it’s imperative that we have a mining policy that is responsive to women’s needs in the sector. We should stand in solidarity with women who are organizing against destructive extractivism. Women have realized that they are mostly impacted in the extractive industry,” Makaza-Kanyimo added.

Tapuwa O’bren Nhachi, research coordinator at the Center for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG), says the Mines and Minerals Bill needs to recognize artisanal mining as an activity which contributes to the economy.

“We need to decriminalize it so women can operate in a free environment without being harassed,” Nhachi told IPS.

Nhachi added his organization has since trained 27 women artisanal miners who are now operating in syndicates and have their own claims.

Excerpt:

The main street of Ressaca, a town of garimpeiros or artisanal gold miners, on the right bank of the Xingu River, along the stretch called the Volta Grande or Big Bend, where a large-scale mining project, promoted by the Canadian company Belo Sun, is causing concern among the local people in this part of Brazil’s Amazon region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RESSACA, Brazil, Apr 7 2017 (IPS)

The decline of this town is seen in the rundown houses and shuttered stores, and the few people along the streets on a Sunday when the scorching sun alternates with frequent rains at this time of year in Brazil’s Amazon region.

“There is still a lot of gold here,” said Valdomiro Pereira Lima, pointing to the ground on a muddy street in the town of Ressaca, to emphasize that the riches underground extend along the right bank of the Xingu River at the 100-km stretch known as Volta Grande or Big Bend, which could restore the local economy.

This drew Belo Sun, a transnational Canadian mining corporation that intends to extract 60 tons of gold in 12 years through plants that separate gold from rock, in what is to be the largest open-pit gold mine in the country.

But the mine has given rise to a new wave of concern among the locals of Ressaca and other communities downstream, where the local population has already been affected by the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, operational since late 2015 and set to be completed in 2019.

Valdomiro Pereira Lima, a garimpeiro or informal miner, says there is gold beneath the streets of the town of Ressaca, as in many other areas along the Volta Grande of the Xingu River. But the residents of this rundown town in Brazil’s Amazon region are opposed to a large-scale gold mining project. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The 64-year-old Pereira Lima has been mining for gold since 1980, when at the age of 27 he left farming in Maranhão, his home state in northeastern Brazil, to become a “garimpeiro” or informal artisanal miner in Brazil’s Amazon region.

He worked in Sierra Pelada, in the northern state of Pará, and in Volta Grande, which lured near 100,000 miners in the 1980s, as well as in the state of Roraima, along the border with Venezuela, before settling in Ressaca.

But the gold that gave rise to this village and brought it prosperity, as well as to other towns and settlements that emerged around nearby mines, started to become less accessible, while the garimpeiro way of life deteriorated, IPS noted, talking with all the interested parties during a one-week tour of the Volta Grande.

“There were over 8,000 garimpeiros when I arrived here in 1992, today there are just 400 to 500 left,” said 53-year-old José Pereira Cunha, vice president of the Mixed Cooperative of Garimpeiros from Ressaca, Itatá, Galo, Ouro Verde and Ilha da Fazenda.

“We used to find up to two kg of gold per week, now it’s only one per year,” said the garimpeiro leader, known by the nickname of Pirulito, because he is a small man. He has been a miner since the age of 17, and also got his start in Sierra Pelada.

But everything collapsed after 2012, when the police and environmental inspectors began to crack down on the garimpeiros, driving out many of them, he said. Moreover, the mining authorities did not renew the operating permits for the cooperative, outlawing the miners, who are still active in some mines.

Dozens of them have filed lawsuits in faraway cities.

“We have turned to the justice system to secure our rights,” said Cunha, who blames the campaign on Belo Sun and the municipal and state governments, interested in collecting more taxes, since the persecution began two years after the company began investigating potential gold deposits along the Volta Grande.

The village of Ilha da Fazenda depends economically on the town of Ressaca, where many families have left due to the decline of small-scale gold mining, added to the impact of the nearby Belo Monte hydroelectric plant. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The company obtained an advance license in 2004, which recognises the environmental viability of the project. And on Feb. 2 the Environment and Sustainability department of the state of Pará granted it a permit to build the necessary plants.

But just two weeks later, the justice system suspended the permit for 180 days, demanding measures to relocate the affected population and clarification about the land acquired for the mine, presumably illegally.

Belo Sun claims that it has met all the requirements and conditions. The company keeps a register of the local population in the directly affected area, which it continually updates, because “the garimpeiros come and go,” according to Mauro Barros, the director of the company in Brazil.

João Lisboa Sobrinho, 85, a baker from Ilha da Fazenda who “only” has ten children. Until recently, he used 50 kg of flour a day to make bread, but now uses just three – a reflection of the decline and depopulation of this island village along the Xingu River, in the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“It is not necessary to remove the population, we can even operate with everybody staying in their homes, if that’s what they want. All over the world there are active mines next to cities,” said Barros, a lawyer with previous experience in other mining companies.

But he said, in an interview at the company’s headquarters in the nearby city of Altamira, that those who are relocated will be provided with all the services, access to the river and support to earn an income. “We want to develop the region,” he said, adding that at least 80 per cent of the company’s employees will be locals.

The company will generate 2,100 direct jobs at the peak of the installation phase, and 526 once the mine is operational, he said. The promise is to train the garimpeiros to work in mechanized mining.

According to estimates from Belo Sun, there are probable reserves of 108.7 tons of gold.

It takes a ton of rocks to obtain a gram of gold.

Barros ruled out the risk, which has raised concern among the local population and environmentalists, that the mine will pollute the waters of the Xingu River, which has already been contaminated and has a reduced water level due to the Belo Monte mine. He guaranteed that Belo Sun would only use rainwater, and would hold its waste products safely.

But the conflict with the miners’ cooperative, community leaders and indigenous people who live along the Volta Grande has already begun.

“Either Belo Sun throws us out of here or we throw them out,” said Cunha, vice president of the cooperative.

The town has not received the promised compensation from Norte Energía, the company that holds the concession to run Belo Monte, nor services from the municipality, because “it would be pointless, since we are supposed to be resettled,” said Francisco Pereira, head of the Association of Ressaca Residents.

A map from Belo Sun showing the area where the Canadian mining company intends to extract 60 tons of gold. In blue, the Volta Grande or Big Bend in the Xingu River, where the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant has been built, in Brazil’s Amazon region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The town of about 200 families still has no basic sewage. “The wastewater runs into the river, we have no drinking water or sports field, and at the school the heat is unbearable,” and nothing will be done because of the uncertainty created by Belo Sun, said Pereira, a 58-year-old garimpeiro who is now working as a farm labourer.

The uncertainty and decline are also affecting the roughly 50 families that live in Ilha da Fazenda, a village dependent on Ressaca and separated from it by a two-kilometre stretch of a tributary of the Xingu River. Children from the fifth grade and up and sick people can only go to school or receive healthcare in the town of Ressaca, which they reach in small boats.

“In the good old days of the ‘garimpo’ (informal mining), there were dozens of bars in Ilha da Fazenda. They extracted gold in Ressaca and came here to spend their money,” said 85-year-old baker João Lisboa Sobrinho, who has “only ten children” and is a living history of the island village.

“I used to use 50 kg of flour a day to make bread, now I use three at the most,” he said, standing next to the brick oven made by his father in 1952.

“Ninety-five per cent of the people on the island want to move away,” because if Ressaca disappears, it will be impossible to live in Ilha da Fazenda,” said Sebastião Almeida da Silva, who owns the only general store on the island.

More than 20 families have already left the village.

But “I will only leave if I am the only one left,” said Adelir Sampaio dos Santos, a nurse from José Porfirio, the municipality where the mining area is located. “We will only be left isolated if we don’t take action,” she said, urging her fellow villagers to struggle for the school, medical post, water and electricity that are needed in the village.

“With the garimpo in better conditions, supported by the government, with state banks buying our gold, we could bring life back to local cities and towns, we could pay taxes, we could all stay and prosper,” said Divino Gomes, a surveyor who worked with environmentalist organisations before becoming a garimpeiro.

“I have seen mining companies elsewhere, they take all the wealth and leave craters. We have to think about it ten times over before accepting their projects,” he concluded.

The Masakane village in Mpumalanga sits mere meters away from coal heaps feeding Duvha Power Station. The formal coal industry has failed to bring economic opportunities to local communities, so many residents turn to informal coal mining for an income. Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

By Mark Olalde
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 28 2016 (IPS)

In a country with unemployment rising above 25 percent, South Africans are increasingly looking for job creation in small-scale mining, an often-informal industry that provides a living for millions across the continent.

“How do you make formalisation not kill their businesses but rather improve their businesses?" --Sizwe Phakathi
Estimates for the number of small-scale miners in South Africa range from 8,000 to 30,000. Across the African continent, estimates put the number of such miners around 8 million. Roughly another 45 million are thought to depend on their income.

According to the United Nations’ African Mining Vision, almost 20 percent of Africa’s gold production and nearly all the gemstone production besides diamonds are mined by small-scale miners.

Sizwe Phakathi, now the head of safety and sustainable development at the Chamber of Mines, previously researched informal coal and clay mining in Blaauwbosch, KwaZulu-Natal with the Minerals and Energy for Development Alliance and the African Minerals Development Centre.

“We can’t classify it as ‘illegal mining.’ This has been happening for years, and people got to mining this area through customary practices,” he said.

Small-scale gold miners prepare to descend underground for a shift in an abandoned gold mine. South Africa’s mining industry shed 9,000 jobs last quarter alone, so activists search for ways to create new economic opportunities for small-scale mining. Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

These miners are often unaware of the law and operate with permission from the local chief or municipality but without a valid mining permit. In the community Phakathi studied, 94 percent of the miners had never held a mining permit and many did not know of the relevant legislation.

“Many of these people that work there, many of them are breadwinners of their households, and they are heads of households,” Phakati said.

Pheaga Gad Kwata, director of the Department of Mineral Resources’ (DMR) small-scale mining division, believes that bringing these miners into compliance would allow them greater access to technical knowledge and markets.

“We’ve realized that it is one of the activities where you can probably get a job quickly,” Kwata said, adding that the DMR is busy with workshops to educate miners on the benefits of working within the law.

An artisanal miner in Johannesburg displays ore. Activists argue that formalizing small-scale mining could create jobs and allow for the implementation of health and safety regulations. Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

This type of cooperation could assist Jiyana Tshenge, who works with the Prieska Protocol, a program aimed at linking the small-scale miners of a semiprecious gemstone called tiger’s eye to a lapidary and onward to international markets. This streamlined approach is expected to significantly increase the wages of the miners by cutting out the middlemen operating in the informal economy.

A lack of this market access, though, has tabled the project for the moment.

“If we can establish that market and establish a proper plan, we will then go back and engage with the people of the community properly,” Tshenge said. “I think we can create a lot of jobs.”

According to Phakati, an immediate benefit of regulation would be the implementation of health and safety standards, something he found severely lacking in his research. In his case study, the vast majority of workers never used personal protective equipment such as hardhats, goggles or gloves. The local Mzamo High School also had to be relocated when mining encroached on the school and released harmful gases.

The Matariana informal settlement houses illegal gold miners on the Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine, about 50 miles west of Johannesburg. South Africa is home to more than 6,000 abandoned mines, many of which attract small-scale miners. Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

However, formalisation is slowed by the very poverty it is meant to alleviate. Small-scale miners have trouble paying for transport to the DMR’ offices, which are often far from their communities. The costs associated with procuring a permit – such as setting aside a financial provision for environmental rehabilitation and producing environmental impact assessments – also continue to present a barrier to entry.

“How do you make formalisation not kill their businesses but rather improve their businesses? Formalisation should be tailored to their needs,” Phakati said.

Pontsho Ledwaba of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry argues that legislative changes are necessary to smooth the formalisation process. Mining permits currently must be renewed every few years, which could make it difficult to guarantee a return for anyone lending money to these miners. The amount of land allocated in mining permits also weakens these operations’ financial sustainability.

“Five hectares is actually too small for some of the minerals. For granite, sandstone, it’s too small. In terms of investment, [small-scale miners] don’t get investment because two years, five years is a small time to break even and pay back,” Ledwaba said.

According to Ledwaba, the government needs to aim regulations toward historic mining sectors that already operate nearly legally.

“The bulk of them actually mine what we called industrial and construction minerals. These are your sands, your clay, your sandstone,” Ledwaba said. “Those are the ones government has tried to move to the legal space.”

Many of these sectors operate outside the law simply because the relevant legislation came into effect after mining began.

Besides the economic barriers to formalisation, experts agree that sweeping changes to small-scale mining cannot succeed without the participation of female miners.

Between 40-50 percent of Africa’s small-scale mining workforce is female, according to research from the international relations consulting firm German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation.

“Clearly one of the beneficiaries of formalising this is you should create employment for women,” Phakati said. “The formalisation and development of this sector need to target women.”

In rural South African provinces such as Limpopo, women have mined clay for generations. In other areas such as the North West, there are examples of mining permits held by women. Although mining is seen as a male-dominated industry, experts say small-scale mining can be a breeding ground for female entrepreneurship.

“I’ve come across a number of operations actually owned by women,” Ledwaba said. “[Formalisation] will definitely have a gendered impact.”

Mark Olalde’s work is financially supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Fund for Environmental Journalism and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.