Television coverage in the recent past of the drama unfolding at an abandoned mine shaft in Stilfontein, in the North-West province – where police launched an operation in October to force illegal miners scavenging for gold left behind when formal mining ceased out of the mine – gave the wider public a glimpse into the world of illegal mining in South Africa.

As the zama-zamas – Zulu for chance-takers – resurfaced in dribs and drags, South Africans were given an eye-opening view of the gritty realities of life in the belly of the Earth, thanks to brilliant reporting by television journalists who managed to snatch interviews with some of the miners before they were whisked away by police.

An overwhelming majority of the miners are foreign nationals living in the country illegally, some as young as 14. Many are recruited from the roadside in suburban areas, where they wait, hopeful for jobs as gardeners or in construction, only to find themselves plunged into some of the world’s deepest gold mines, forced to work for weeks, if not months, on end.

South Africa’s gold shafts can be 1 km or deeper, requiring ventilation. But when formal mining ceases and zama-zamas move in, ventilation ceases too, leaving the shafts unbearably hot. This is the environment in which the men – soaking wet – work, at least according to reportage on the Stilfontein drama.

Illegal operations at disused gold mines are a pervasive issue in South Africa, with experts estimating that the gold they produce amounts to one-tenth of South Africa’s total output. Reports also suggest that employees of operational mines are sometimes bribed to sneak zama-zamas into shafts, turning a blind eye to the chaos below.

Illegal gold mining has endured in South Africa owing to a perfect storm of factors: an abundance of disused shafts, weak government enforcement of mine closure regulations, and the twin scourges of poverty and unemployment.

But South Africa isn’t the only African country grappling with illegal gold mining. In Ghana, the illegal operators – galamsey in local parlance – cost the national fiscus an estimated $2.3-billion each year in lost revenue through smuggling. Worse, while licensed small-scale miners pan for gold the old-fashioned way – washing sediment with a sieve – the galamsey prefer to cut corners with mercury and cyanide, poisoning the country’s water courses in the process.

Illegal gold mining also flourishes in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and beyond.

But the muddied fellows captured on television at Stilfontein as they were hoisted up the shaft are mere worker ants in underworld colonies. The queen ants, the true profiteers, have skillfully stayed out of the spotlight.

The scale of the queen ants’ haul is laid bare in a March 2024 report from Swiss development nongovernmental organisation SwissAid. The report crunches customs data from African gold-exporting countries and the major non-African buyers – the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Switzerland and India, which are the destination for 80% of this continent’s gold exports. While African customs administrations recorded 777 t of gold exports in 2022, customs data from the three major importers reflects a staggering discrepancy – 435 t more for the same year.

In other words, 435 t – some of which could have come from zama-zama operations – was smuggled, with the proceeds filling the coffers of the queen ants, while the worker ants endure the brutal conditions of disused shafts.

Between 2012 and 2022, a cumulative 2 569 t of gold with a trade value of $115.3-billion was presumably smuggled out of Africa, according to SwissAid.

Unless airport and border controls tighten, customs checks improve and the fight against corruption intensifies, gold smuggling will continue until kingdom come. So too will the zama-zama scourge, with its grim accompaniments: human trafficking, coercion to work under inhumane conditions, crime in mining areas, compromised surrounding infrastructure . . . and much more.

The receiving countries need to step up – especially the UAE, which accounted for a staggering 405 t of the 435 t smuggled in 2022. All it takes is a little cooperation: informing authorities in the countries of origin of suspect shipments or, at the very least, disclosing the identities of the exporters.