Use zama zamas' power?

Here are mines. There are people who are willing to mine those mines. There are no people willing to protect those mines. Would it not make sense to benefit off the people willing to mine the mines and use the money to protect the mines so that the mines can be mined while minding who mines the mines?

- Richard Chemaly

In an underground world where bread costs as much as a tank of petrol and no risk is too large for the financial benefit, you cannot convince anybody that there isn't enough demand and money to at least consider bringing zama zamas into the legal fold.

Take some of the profit, make the mines safer, encourage a responsible policy and manner of doing what's already being done and it may well counter the problems.

It's not much of a secret that, for decades, the law hasn't dealt effectively with illegal mining. It's also no secret that there's little appetite to deal with the zama zamas.

This is why Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, minister in the Presidency, had a chuckle at the suggestion that the state should assist with evacuating the trapped illegal miners in Stilfontein.

There are better things that the state could be spending its resources on, although she'd probably run into a roadblock when confronted with the "most progressive" constitution in the world.