Private miners being starved by the State ?

[Stephen vJ]

I don't see a lot in the news about South Africa up here in the far North West, so maybe you guys can help me with some context... I understand the State has trapped, threatened with arrest and are now starving 4500 private miners for their own safety i.e. it is my understanding that the word "trespassing" has not come up once (yet).

Stephen.

[Erik Peers]

As far as I'm aware the Miners are not trapped they are able to exit whenever they want you however the zama zama are engaged in illegal mining and they may well be arrested

On Thu, 14 Nov 2024, 17:21 Stephen vJ, <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't see a lot in the news about South Africa up here in the far North West, so maybe you guys can help me with some context... I understand the State has trapped, threatened with arrest and are now starving 4500 private miners for their own safety i.e. it is my understanding that the word "trespassing" has not come up once (yet).

Stephen.

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[Stephen vJ]

What exactly is illegal about what they are doing ? Which law are they breaking ? The one where the old apartheid government nationalized all mineral rights so that the wealth of the nation could belong to everyone collectively and now the people who want to actually use that right are doing so without a license ? Or are they breaking some health & safety regulation ? I hear the word illegal being thrown around, but nobody has been able to tell me what they're being charged with when they come out. Self-employment ? Hard work ? Taking risks ? Sounds to me like they're being charged with free market entrepreneurship.

Stephen.

On Nov 14, 2024, at 12:25, Erik Peers <erik...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Erik Peers]

They are trespassing on private property

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[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

I don't think that's true. Mines don't like owning land - it's a stack of capital tied up in something that they're actively pulling all the value out of, so they much prefer someone else own the land and they just buy the mineral rights. Bonus if that someone is the government and they just pay a license fee. Besides, I don't see the mining companies saying anything and in my experience, they would be the first to send security guards if it belonged to them. I highly doubt the property belongs to any of the mining companies. Private land owners don't own the mineral rights in / under their land, so they generally don't care that someone is digging under them for it - I know from having grown up in a mining town where we could often hear the digging and blasting at all hours of the day and night. So I'll bet these people are trespassing on public property, which seems to be an oxymoron. I think they are no more guilty than a homeless person sleeping on a park bench. I think what they need is a good lawyer.

S.

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[Petrus Potgieter]

I think Stephen is basically right. Mineral rights have been further nationalised under the new(ish) dispensation q.v.

Nationalisation of mineral rights in South Africa
Johan D van der Vyver
https://www.dejure.up.ac.za/images/files/vol45-1-2012/Chapter%207.pdf

in this regard. My understanding is that the artisinal miners (which is the PC way to refer to them) are sometimes in real no-woman's underground but sometimes are operating where a company already has exclusive rights (which is a kind of semi-property) to mine. In practice, people in the industry tell me, they create an extremely dangerous situation wherever they are and from every point of view. Whatever they do definitely interferes (in practice) with people exercising their rights to mine (exclusively) or simply to go about their everyday business.

My guess is that the "crime" of the artisinal miners really is being underground without a licence. However the surface certainly belongs to someone (perhaps, the state). If the police are asked by the owner of the (surface) land to stop supplies from the surface to the underground operators, I would see that as legitimate – even if the owner just consents to it. Nobody wants them there, believe me.


Op 14-11-2024 om 14:16:02 -0700 skryf Stephen van Jaarsveldt sjaar...@gmail.com:

[Erik Peers]

The miners also carry illegal firearms which is also problematic.

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[Stephen vJ]

Well that's not true either. They clearly want themselves there and who the hell are the rest of us to tell them not to ? This is not like stealing copper cables from Telkom - the minerals are sitting there, at no expense to anyone, owned publicly, and these brave men are willing to risk their lives to go get it in order to bring those scarce resources to market and so doing provide for their families. I'm starting to think I want them there. Has everyone lost their sense of liberty ? Freedom is not just freedom to do what is right and good and safe and healthy, but also to do what is stupidly dangerous, so long as everyone involved consents. Now, if they dig in a way which would cause surface property to sink or some such, that's a different story, but so far they seem to be quite sophisticated. You have to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making a living.

Stephen.

On Nov 14, 2024, at 23:57, Petrus Potgieter <pet...@potgieter.org> wrote:

I think Stephen is basically right. Mineral rights have been further nationalised under the new(ish) dispensation q.v.

[Stephen vJ]

I highly doubt carrying illegal firearms is unique to the miners, plus I've seen enough of mining to know you're not carrying a heavy piece of metal down a deep hole from which you plan to carry rock, if you can help it - extra weight is not going to make a tough job easier. Many taxi drivers and farm workers and farmers and truckers and store attendants carry illegal firearms, but we don't call them illegal taxi drivers or illegal store attendants because they happen to do something else illegal at the same time.

Stephen.

On Nov 15, 2024, at 00:00, Erik Peers <erik...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Erik Peers]

One of the externalities of their mining is that they impose a cost on adjacent mines through various ways eg tunnelling without agreed safety margins which then causes a collapse in the neighbouring mine.

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[Petrus Potgieter]

Also true.

Artisinal miners are a problem like crocodiles are a problem. Every natural right to go about there business but at some point you can no longer afford to have them do that around you. And, yes, I know that I am condemning a whole class of people but I don't want to put them on trains to an extermination camp - I just want them to surface and I am suspending my sense of liberty in this case for pragmatic reasons. Perhaps the Zimbabwean approach to artisinal mining (all I know is that it is different and more liberal) would be a good idea here but that is for the medium term.

I am more concerned about the police arresting people selling (bad) fake Calvin Klein underwear since I have never heard of someone afraid to go to Boksburg because it is full of fake Calvin Klein broeks.


Op 15-11-2024 om 09:43:57 +0200 skryf Erik Peers erik...@gmail.com:

[Stephen vJ]

We all have neighbours who do things we don't like. Calling them illegal doesn't make it so. What would the free market response be to such collapses ? Clearly not what is currently happening... although, surprisingly the State now seems to be backing off and standing back, which I think I agree with, albeit for entirely different reasons.

Stephen.

On Nov 15, 2024, at 00:44, Erik Peers <erik...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Stephen vJ]

Agreed. I love the term artisanal miners - that is so apt.

Stephen.

On Nov 15, 2024, at 00:52, Petrus Potgieter <pet...@potgieter.org> wrote:

Also true.

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[Trevor Watkins]

How would the Johannesburg Individualist Corporation (a diverse collection of individuals and companies that have bought a stake in the corporation, which owns large tracts of Johannesburg) respond?:

1. Establish the current owners of the disputed land being mined.
2. Establish if they have given permission to the Zama-zamas(or others, like Randgold) to mine their land.
3. If yes, then everyone back off and let them pursue their interests, dangerous as they may be to themselves.
4. If no, then set steps in motion to enforce the property rights of the owner, and to evict the miners. Some negotiation might be in order.
5. If the Zama zamas damage or threaten to damage someone else's property, then let this third party sue them for recovery of the damages.
6. Once everyone understands this, and government is removed, it is really quite simple. Happens all the time in the free market.

Trevor Watkins .. cSASI
bas...@gmail.com - 083 44 11 721 - www.individualist.one

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[Stephen vJ]

I agree, but you're missing one very important step. Find out if the zamazama are willing to pay to mine your land. It might not be much, but it might be enough to strike a deal that benefits everyone.

Why is almost everyone assuming they are violent, destructive and unreasonable, as opposed to humans ?

Stephen.

On Nov 15, 2024, at 01:41, Trevor Watkins <bas...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Petrus Potgieter]

I have read a bit more about this and have talked to someone working in mining. According to the latter, the zamazama activities always involve damage to underground infrastructure. This can have widespread consequences, including for neighbouring mines since they are usually linked up and rely on water pumping and things like that to work according to plan. The artisinal miners damage support infrastructure as well so that it becomes impossible for the mine's owners to go back later and start mining again when the price improves. There is also pollution as a result of damage underground, in some cases uranium-rich water flowing into communities. Above ground, they use mercury which also gets into everything.

Apparently, the miners are quite innovative and able to find relatively high grade ore. But they can exploit this only by degrading existing infrastructure and (of course) operating with a level of risk that no formal enterprise could possibly entertain.

They are not mining someone's land. They are mining someone's mine.


Op 15-11-2024 om 09:11:16 -0700 skryf Stephen vJ sjaar...@gmail.com:

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Ok, so they are destructive and polluting and of private property, but are they violent, unreasonable and unwilling to pay a fee for the use of those mines ? I'm also inclined to wonder, if they are held accountable for the destruction and pollution, if they would be able to continue mining un-used mines seeing as these small-scale guys clearly have less overhead and lower cost, so from an economic perspective they seem to be able to extract value that the bigger guys are not. Maybe the difference is purely the destruction and pollution that they're not paying for, but I can't help think that they might cover those costs and still be able to mine profitably. Maybe not, but it seems they are not even being given the opportunity to try. If they can and do, surely that is the purest form of broad based black economic empowerment, not to mention proof that the market tends to more competition rather than towards monopoly.

S.

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