The Backstory

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction and overview of the book. It discusses the concept of informal mining in Johannesburg and places this within a historical context of gold mining and labour migration in Southern Africa. The main conceptual framework of informality and exclusion are discussed, and an overview of the research methods presented. Finally, some key contemporary socio-economic indicators that provide context to informal and precariously livelihoods such as informal mining are shared.

Over a century ago, gold was discovered in the barren and dusty area that is now called Johannesburg. Today the city is the largest in southern Africa and an economic hub on the continent. Over the years, millions of people have flocked here in search of refuge, or riches, experiencing both risk and reward (Landau, 2010; Moodie & Ndatshe, 1994; Nuttall et al., 2008). For a few there are fortunes to be made, but for many of the city’s inhabitants, like the people in this book, Johannesburg is a place of struggle, a daily reality of multiple and intersecting precarity. The marginalisation of poor people in terms of jobs, services, security and governance leaves millions of mainly Black South Africans and the majority of African international migrants facing severe and everyday ontological insecurity. Bred from centuries of land dispossession, racialised inequities, intergenerational poverty and trauma, and current-day economic exclusion, the urban poor wrestle with survival (Beall, 2002; Moyo et al., 2016).

One such group is the Zama Zama (translated from isiZulu as the hustlers), a term used to describe those that work in informal gold mining, and this book tells their stories. The lives of the Zama Zama are reflective of the history of the inequity and exploitation of gold mining (Wilson, 2001); and of the contemporary realties of urban informality, governance and xenophobia (Eliseev, 2008). These complexities, I argue, create a shadow state in which formal state institutions are absent or misdirected for personal means, leaving space for informal governance and politics to thrive. This form of governance and social order further marginalises the already vulnerable: the poor, women, migrants and those with limited social capital; reinforces ethnic and nationalist tendencies; sharpens divides among people, has limited opportunities for transparency and redress; and ultimately threatens the political stability of the country in the future.

Nonetheless, rather than suggesting that this class is dormant or despondent, this book’s stories of the Zama Zama demonstrate agency among poor and marginalised people in South Africa. The work of informal mining is carefully constructed, connected to spiritualities and spatial realities, and organised and innovative. However, in their struggles to survive they are responding to, and reinforcing a new order ‘outside’ the state which is bottom-up, informal, patronage-based, and entrenched within racial, gendered and xenophobic notions.

This book is based on an extensive multi-year ethnography of informal mining by a research team that I led, in Johannesburg from 2012–2017. Using interviews, conversations, participant observation, participation, friendships and relationships, empirical material from miners, and the community they live in, this book tells the stories of informal mining in the city. The lives of the Zama Zama are characterised by ontological insecurity that includes informal livelihoods, informal housing and a precarious relationship to the state. It is these notion of informality—and the complexities, nuances and dynamics that they constitute—that are detailed and discussed in the chapters that follow. In hearing their voices, and taking an intimate look at their work, their daily life and the complex ways in which they navigate the city, this book illustrates broader themes of poverty and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. To be poor. To have broken dreams, crushed promises, corrupt systems and a daily hustle for survival: to find shelter, to eat, to belong, to exist and to be safe. The disparities of fortunes and legal frameworks enjoyed by those at the top and bottom parts of gold’s value chain reflect the vast economic inequality which remains predominant in South Africa.

But there is more. This story is situated within a broader discussion on the state and the people in South Africa drawing on a long tradition of how the state is imagined and formed (Crais, 2002; Mattes, 2002); and on its failure to deliver services in the post-apartheid period (Desai & Desāī 2002; Oldfield & Greyling, 2015). Informal gold mining in Johannesburg occurs at the edge of the city in material, physical and legal ways. The daily struggles of the poor in this book call into question the role of the post-apartheid state. Through the stories of the Zama Zama, the ideal of a constitutional, rights-based society in South Africa gives way to a more organic and fluid form of governance: a country in which informality and inequality have taken root, and where a form of governance that threatens the fledgling democracy of the country emerges. This type of governance erodes the capabilities of a democratic state and gives way to an informal, patronage-based network of survival in which racial, ethnic and political identities matter.

The central purpose of this book, therefore, is twofold. First, through personal narratives, life histories, ethnographic observations and interviews, it documents the lives, livelihoods and everyday realities of a particular section of the urban poor in post-apartheid South Africa. These stories suggest a wide and deep form of pervasive precarity, flowing from historical structural inequities and contemporary restrictions that hinder full participation in the economy or political life, and push people to dangerous work in informal mining. Second, drawing on these narratives, I raise questions about the meanings of governance, belonging and citizenship in South Africa today. I argue that these stories demonstrate that South Africa’s historical political economy and its current social structures recreate multiple, pervasive and colliding forms of informality that create an upside-down world in which the poor, and those that who are socially excluded, survive on the fringes of South African society in legal, material and physical ways, which are rooted in the city’s histories and are a product of its contemporary socio-economic complexities. In this sense, rights and duties as understood in classical liberal theory do not matter and, instead, governance and belonging are informally contested and based on patronage.

Overall, in this book, I posit that the experiences of this community are a symptom of a failing state in South Africa, when the capacity and authority of the state to govern is eroded or disregarded. In terms of jobs and services, security and governance, poor people struggle to survive each day, and from this sense of desperation and marginalisation their efforts, activities and existence become criminalised by the state through its various actors and institutions. At the same time, this community is creating a new order ‘outside’ the state which is bottom-up, informal, patronage-based and entrenched within predominant racial, gendered, class and xenophobic notions. It is a social and political order which is much less about rights, than about responding to precarity, accessing patronage networks and attempting to ensure survival. And while this communities’ strategies have potential to allow different understandings of citizenship and to create pathways to survival for poor and socially excluded people, the broader adoption of such strategies by more and more people has, I argue, risks for the survival of democracy in South Africa.

In the subsequent chapters of this book, the experiences and strategies of the poor and socially excluded in their daily quest for survival are shared. The main characters of the book and an overview of how informal mining works are described in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 contains a detailed discussion of informal communities and of how spatial and sacred dynamics inform the labour of the Zama Zama. In Chapter 4, I use a case study of an underground accident to explore informality and precarity in health care and the criminal justice system. Read together, these narratives provide a helpful way to understand the intersecting forms of informality and precarity, and the outcomes these pose for governance and how we understand and build citizenship in the global South which are summarised in Chapter 5. The rest of Chapter 1 provides some contextual pieces on South Africa’s socio-economic indicators, informal mining and labour mobility.

The Urban Poor and the State

Since 1994, South Africa is a constitutional democracy and an important member of the developing world. It is part of the G20, the international forum for economic cooperation, and has the second biggest economy on the continent. Politically, South Africa is distinct in the region for its post-apartheid democratic order, pillared on a liberal constitution that favours broad civil liberties, for example, recognition of same-sex marriages, asylum protection, gender equality and the progressive realisation of socio-economic rights (Dempers et al., 2018). But despite its economic dominance and political achievements, South Africa continues to face significant challenges. Slow and unequal economic growth has resulted in persistently high rates of unemployment, for example, in 2021 the official unemployment rate was 33% (a statistic which excluded those who had given up looking for work) (Statistics South Africa, 2021). Poverty and inequality remain high, both in rural and in urban areas, and especially among Black households. Regional instability and a lack of opportunities in rural areas and small towns across the country have resulted in rapid in migration to the city, and together with international migration and natural population growth have resulted in high urbanisation rates. In this context, informal mining is a critical, but poorly protected and highly stigmatised, livelihood strategy for the marginalised and urban poor to survive.

Over the past 25 years widespread and systematic corruption, nepotism, poor or absent service delivery of essential services such as housing, electricity, education, health, water and sanitation, and poor law enforcement have been rampant. This has led to an overwhelming sense of political disenfranchisement among citizens. Consequently, a huge and widening gulf between the state and the people has emerged, characterised by a lack of trust in government on the one hand, and organic movements to meet service needs outside the state, on the other. Together this has contributed to a decline in the authority of the nation state and its credibility, and capacity to govern (Francis & Webster, 2019; Hart, 2002; Ledger, 2020).

While a sense of urgency about South Africa’s political future and stability has reached a crescendo between 2015 and 2021, as the avalanche of publications, protests and political and legal challenges reveal a decade of corruption and graft under former President Jacob Zuma’s rule (2009–2018), South Africa’s current political, economic and social unrest cannot solely be placed on Zuma’s back. Although South Africa experienced a period of economic stability and growth, and a respected international reputation during the Mandela and Mbeki eras, the benefit of this was limited to the middle class. For the majority of the country, the poor, Mbeki’s administration denied anti-retroviral drugs to millions of people with HIV, slowed down land reform, failed to convert economic growth into jobs or services, and instead invested heavily on the global stage, hosting the FIFA Soccer World Cup in 2010, for instance, and pursuing political aspirations on the continent (Daniel et al., 2003; Habib, 2009). Mbeki, the well dressed, charming, western-educated politician, was out of touch with the majority of his citizens, paving the way for Jacob Zuma to grasp the leadership of the African National Congress, and with it the Presidency. The popular, and populist Zuma, carved a new image of the state. With his Zulu song and dance at public speeches, joviality, working-class background, and traditional Zulu values that he espoused, he would bring about a different form of politics, characterised by informality, paternalism, disregard for the law, and populism (Gevisser, 2013; Gumede, 2008; Gunner, 2009).

Despite the performative politics of Zuma his policies and practice of graft worsened economic conditions in the country. Poverty, inflation, unemployment and inequality all spiralled. The poor responded largely through small-scale mobilisation in the form of recurrent service delivery demonstrations against local councillors that often turned into violent battles with the police (Basson & Toit, 2017; Mlambo, 2019; Rapanyane, 2020).

In this political and economic context, among urban poor communities such as the Zama Zama the concept and performance of citizenship has been redrawn. Defined as membership of a nation state (Shapiro, 2000) and a vehicle through which rights and duties arise, citizenship in the classical liberal sense is understood as people demonstrating choices through legal rights as members of a state (Lister, 1997). This understanding of citizenship is at odds with people’s experiences across both time and space. Citizenship continues to exclude certain groups of people from membership and, therefore, from rights, based on migration status, ethnic, religious or social identity, political membership, etc. (Kabeer, 2002). At the same time, people have exercised agency and claimed rights through other forms of affiliation and belonging outside of citizenship (Meagher et al., 2014: p. 10; Reinicke et al., 2000). This has been formally organised through local political or ethnic groups, or informally through loose sets of networks, systems and processes which sometimes have acted as forms of governance. I argue here, that in South Africa, the urban poor have taken matters into their own hand, creating a parallel world of informality to meet their basic needs for services such as housing, water, electricity, sanitation, education, jobs and protection, because of the absence of the state.

A History of Gold

Beneath the rocky outcrops and the scrub bushes which characterise the Johannesburg landscape, gold deposits have lain underground for 3 billion years in a geological basin that today stretches around 400 km from the Free State province in the central interior of South Africa northwards to the provinces of Gauteng and North West. At some points, it reaches 4,000 m in depth, making these gold mines some of the deepest in the world (Neingo & Tholana, 2016). In 1866, gold was discovered close to what is now known as Johannesburg promoting a scramble for profit that would shape the region’s politics and economy. By 1899 the region was producing almost a third of the world’s gold (Fig. 1.1).

Over the last 50 years, gold production has been steadily declining in South Africa. In 1970, a 1000t of gold was produced accounting for 40% for global gold supply, this dropped to just 99t, or 4% of global output in 2020, see Fig. 1.2 (Gopaul, 2019). This drop is attributed to two key factors: the remaining accessible gold reserves were deeper than the deposits previously mined making it more difficult, dangerous and expensive to extract; and extensive political and labour transformation in the country which impacted labour supply, and costs and capital ownership (Neingo & Tholana, 2016). There are currently 86 industrial gold mines in the country, almost all owned by four major companies: Gold Fields, Anglo Gold Ashanti, Harmony, and Sibanye Gold, and located in three of the country’s interior provinces—Gauteng, the North West and Free State. Most mines are in the areas known as the West Rand, the location for this study (Minerals Council of South Africa, 2020)

Fig. 1.1

Location of gold mines by company, South Africa, 2020 (Source Minerals Council of South Africa)

Fig. 1.2

Production volume of gold in South Africa from 2010–2020 (Source US Geological Survey)

The production of gold is laced with inequality and labour migration. Under British colonial rule, Black people lost land ownership, reducing them to waged work which would lock generations into poverty (Callinicos, 1980; Vosloo, 2020). Further land, education and social policies under apartheid entrenched racialised inequities and mass poverty. A primary component of this was the regional labour migration system which allowed the mining sector to outsource the reproductive costs of labour to regional countries. Under the Aliens Control Act of 1991, and various bilateral labour agreements between South Africa and Southern African governments (Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Malawi), mining companies had access to steady supplies of labour at low cost, while making it impossible for migrants to ever become permanent residents of South Africa (Burawoy, 1976).

Gold is difficult, dangerous and expensive to extract and the gold mines in South Africa are notoriously deep, requiring intensive capital, technology and labour. To keep labour costs down, gold mining companies arranged “into nine holding companies” and “established a pattern of regional labour recruitment, remuneration, and accommodation that would mark subsequent social and economic relations in the country” (Gordon et al., 2022)

In southern Africa, industrial gold mining was a significant source of employment and livelihoods to thousands of households in the region. Throughout the twentieth century, at least 40% of workers employed on South African mines originated from outside South Africa’s formal borders (Wentzel & Tlabela, 2006). Between 1990 and 2006, the sector underwent rapid transformation resulting in a 47% decrease in the number of international mineworkers in gold mines across the country. Many companies turned to subcontracting to meet their labour often hiring former employees at lower wages and with limited or no benefits such as health care, housing or health insurance (Bezuidenhout, 2011). This further increases the precarity of families who are dependent on the wages and benefits of mineworkers in the region. Today, mining continues to be an important source of employment in South Africa, but with declining production, employment in the sector is also decreasing (Neingo & Tholana, 2016; Gopaul, 2019) (Figs. 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6)

Fig. 1.3

Number of people employed by gold mining in South Africa from 2007–2017 (Source This is Gold, July 2018 Fact Sheet)

Fig. 1.4

Mineworkers on gold mines by country of birth, 1990–2006 (Source Data from Crush & Williams, 2010: p. 11)

Fig. 1.5

Mineworkers on gold mines by country of birth (Source Data from Crush & Williams, 2010: p. 11)

Fig. 1.6

Percentage of total gold miners that are foreign migrants (Source Data from Crush & Williams, 2010: p. 11)

Mobility and Xenophobia

Migration patterns in South Africa are changing. During apartheid, mobility was dominated by regional, temporary and circular labour migration in the mining and agricultural sectors. This movement was largely conceived and controlled by the state to ensure a steady supply of labour to the key sectors of the economy (Jinnah, 2016a, 2016b). During the 1990s, there was an inflow of migrants as the country re-entered the international community. In 1998, a progressive asylum and refuge regime that followed an urban self-settlement policy (opposed to an encampment one which was typical across southern and eastern Africa) attracted forced migrants from across the continent and beyond. In the early 2000s, regional migration persisted due to several reasons: the political and economic crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe, and ongoing unrest in Mozambique, the decline of the textile sector in landlocked Lesotho and political and economic pressures in Swaziland (now Eswatini). By the mid-2000s migration to South Africa was mixed and fluid. The formal steady male-dominated labour temporary migration pattern had given way to formal and informal mobility with fluctuating numbers, a country which had porous borders and little idea how to count or manage the movement of people (Jinnah, 2016a, 2016b).

These challenges paved the way for an increasingly anti-foreigner rhetoric and xenophobic violence on the ground, and a confused, chaotic and crisis driven migration response from the government. Stuck in the middle between a hostile host population and a corrupt and confused state, migrants did whatever was needed to obtain documentation, find shelter and earn a livelihood (Jinnah, 2017). At the same time, unemployment was increasing in the country and rural–urban migration was also on the increase. Today, Johannesburg remains a city of mobility. Of the estimated population of 4 million people, 10% are internal migrants from elsewhere in the country, and a further estimated 1 million are cross-border migrants (Statistics South Africa, 2018). Migration, both international and internal in South Africa, continues to increase. Between 2012 and 2017, there was a 1.4% increase of international migrant workers across the country. In real numbers, this means that there are 2 million foreign migrants in the country. Like poor south Africans there is no social security or housing assistance available and therefore migrants join the swelling ranks of the urban poor in search of shelter, and livelihoods. Consequently, vulnerable south Africans and migrants became entangled in race for survival and scare resources, further exacerbating xenophobic tendencies and informal nodes of governance as street by street, township by township (as informal housing settlements are known), groups wrestled for control of business opportunities, housing and services (Crush, 2022; Kok & Collinson, 2006; Landau, 2020).

Most migrants are drawn to the city in search of the promise of work. With rising numbers and a dwindling economy, jobs remain scarce, and unemployment hovers at dangerously high rates (in 2017, the unemployment rate for South Africans was 28% while for international migrants it was 18.4%). For migrants, like poor South Africans, the informal sector is a safety net. Migrants are more likely to be employers, and own account workers (self-employed) than South Africans) and are more likely to be informally employed (27% of migrants work in the informal sector compared to 16% of South Africans (Jinnah, 2020). Available statistics offer a partial picture of mobility and employment. The limited scope of the migration module in the national labour force survey, the five-year gap in its administration, and the fluidity of migration, means that there is much we do not know about migrant and employment in South Africa. Similarly, the informality of employment is not completely captured in existing national surveys. The evidence that is available though is sobering but not surprising: a tanking economy, high levels of unemployment and poverty, and widespread precarity. Even using the narrow definition of unemployment, which excludes a count of discouraged job seekers, a third of the country’s residents are without work, and almost a fifth rely on the informal sector. The latter is characterised by poor employment conditions such as long hours, dangerous work, low wages and little social protection. In other words, even when people do have jobs, it is not enough to escape poverty. Indeed, the reliance on the informal sector suggests that millions of people in South Africa are facing multiple and intersecting barriers to realising a decent life. Second, race and gender matter in South Africa. Black women continue to have the highest unemployment rates and the least desirable jobs. Among migrants as well, migrant men enjoy higher employment rates than migrant women. Third, migration is here to stay. South Africa has implemented a range of stricter immigration policies and border control measures nationally. In local areas, xenophobia remains a reality. Yet, migration is a strategy for survival for both low-income South African households and those in the SADC region. Historical inequities in wealth, underdevelopment, poverty and unemployment, as well as an economy that does not create sufficient jobs, mean that moving is often the only option for survival (Jinnah, 2020).

For foreign migrants, the search for a job or livelihood is coupled with the reality of violent and ongoing xenophobia. False rhetoric on migrants causing crime and taking jobs coupled with political opportunism and local level business conflict have fuelled strong xenophobic attacks in the last 15 years. In May 2008 violent xenophobic attacks left 62 people dead, in April 2015, 7 people were killed including Emmanuel Sithole in a particularly brutal way echoing the violence seen in township streets during apartheid. In 2019 unrest in the KwaZulu-Natal province, and later in Johannesburg led to displacement, looting and more than 300 people losing their lives. In January 2022, operation Dudula (to push back in isiZulu) led by a small group of locals targeted foreign-owned business forcing many to shut down and carried out vigilant checks on immigrants and business for permits and licences. At the time of publication, Dudula continues to gain momentum across the country (Eliseev, 2008; Everatt, 2011; Machinya, 2022).

A Conceptual Approach to Informal Mining

I situate informal mining in this book within two broader frameworks: informal economies, and social exclusion which together help to theorise the nature, function and outcomes of this type of work. Two billion people around the world rely on the informal sector to earn a livelihood (Bonnet, 2019). In sub-Saharan Africa, a history colonialisation, rapid post-independent urbanisation and chronic unemployment have resulted in a vibrant yet precarious, innovative and growing informal sector that provides jobs for millions of people one-third of all employment in South Africa is in the informal sector¹ (ILO, 2018; Rogan & Skinner, 2022), with women, Blacks, (Rogan & Skinner, 2022) and international migrants disproportionately here (Jinnah, 2020). The informal economy is defined as (Chen, 2012: p. 7):

All forms of ‘informal employment’—that is, employment without labour or social protection—both inside and outside informal enterprises, including both self-employment in unregistered enterprises and waged employment in unprotected jobs.

Although globally, scholarship and policymakers have questioned a dualist approach to the sector, in South Africa responses to supporting informal work in its own right as a sector of employment, innovation and opportunity are still limited (Potts, 2008). Instead, informal mining like other forms of informal work is often criminalised and stigmatised. I distinguish between informal mining and illegal mining using three factors, once again drawing on Chen (2012). Firstly, I note a distinction between illegal goods and services, and illegal systems and processes. In this case, artisanal mining consists of producing goods (gold) that are legal, but the production of which is undertaken outside of legal frameworks. Secondly, it is not possible to determine whether those engaging in this activity are doing so with the intention of avoiding the costs associated with legality. In other words, there is no evidence to suggest that informal miners are overtly operating outside of regulation, with an intention of avoiding taxes or other statutory obligations. In fact, the data in this study suggests the opposite, namely that many informal miners want to have their activities recognised as work, and many have stated their willingness to pay taxes. In many instances, remaining informal and within the precarity that accompanies it (evidenced by frequent injury and mortality, regular arrests, the payment of bribes to police and poor working conditions with no access to social security) comes at great risk to the worker. Thirdly, the ‘illegality’ of informal mining stems from a lack of effective regulatory provisions for small-scale mining, rather than overt criminal intent on the part of those engaged in it. The challenges of the process for obtaining legal permits to mine as a small-scale artisanal miner are overly bureaucratic, expensive and administratively inaccessible (see Legal Resources Centre [LRC], 2016). Narrow provisions for legal artisanal small-scale mining in South Africa do exist, but they favour capital investors who can negotiate the bureaucracy needed to obtain the necessary permit to mine. The majority of small-scale miners have neither the monetary nor, at times, the legal capacity required to obtain permits. Although many are migrants, some undocumented, the majority of small-scale miners are South Africans who work in the informal economy or are internal migrants with little formal education, and therefore limited access to the formal labour market.

A strong case can be made to define the work of the Zama Zama as a form of artisanal informal mining as opposed to illegal mining. Miners use basic equipment, have limited safety mechanisms, and there is weak or absent regulatory framework around artisanal informal mining in the country. These characteristics echo the definition of the sector by the ILO (2018). Artisanal mining is also associated with several challenges, including death and disability for miners who work under poor and risky conditions, poor health outcomes, as a result of limited protection and awareness (ILO, 2018). Thus, informal artisanal mining involves all activities related to prospecting, mining and selling minerals which occur in abandoned or closed mines, which occur outside of registered and formal processes of regulation, and is undertaken by people who work with limited or a lack of access to safety mechanisms, as well as to labour and social protection.

There is no firm data that quantifies the extent of artisanal informal mining globally, or in South Africa. What do we know, is that artisanal mining is an important source of livelihoods for people in the global South. In 2015, an estimated 13 million people around the world worked directly in the artisanal mining sector, with a further 80 million people rely on it for income support. The majority of artisanal mining occurs in the global South, where the availability of mineral resources, coupled with weak regulatory systems, high unemployment and poverty push many into this sector. In South Africa, anecdotal data suggests that internal and international migrants may be disproportionately involved in this sector, and that it also constitutes an important livelihood activity for the urban poor (Jinnah, 2016a, 2016b; 2017).

I expand on this concept of informality by turning to social exclusion theory, which is defined as ‘a process and a state that prevents individuals or groups from full participation in social, economic and political life and from asserting their rights; it derives from exclusionary relationships’ (Beall et al., 2014). This approach helps to contextualise artisanal mining as a livelihood strategy as a response to legal and social marginalisation of migrants in post-apartheid South Africa (Jinnah, 2016a, 2016b; Kihato & Landau, 2017). In addition, my argument in subsequent chapters regarding informal governance can be placed within social exclusion theory as a form of agency among the urban poor.

Informal mining is rooted in the city’s history and is a product of its contemporary socio-economic complexities. It is an important, but high-risk livelihood strategy of the urban poor, especially cross-border migrants, and is wrought with legal and social restrictions that further compound the dangers that miners and mining communities face in their work (Thornton, 2014). There are significant health, safety and well-being outcomes and conditions associated with informal mining that are poorly documented. In particular, the rise of informal settlements in or near mining towns, the lack of adequate protection to workers in the sector, the criminalisation of the sector and the disregard for the environmental rehabilitation of mines have colluded to create a risky and dangerous environment for those living and working in mining communities. Mining in South Africa is also rooted in long-held beliefs and rituals that bring into question how the ownership of natural resources, the structure of work teams and the organisation of labour have been squashed to fit normative, western concepts of ownership and legality. Through an anthropological reading of informal mining, a decolonial approach to informal mining is developed, an approach that questions the use of land and resources, the role of the state and the art of governance among the urban poor. It is within this context of informality, violence and precarity that the Zama Zama live and work.