This paper examines unregulated gold-mining activities prevalent at disused mines and decommissioned shafts at operating mines in post-apartheid South Africa. This kind of mining is deemed illegal by the government since it is outside the parameters of the country’s main mining legislation. The author uses the concept of ‘the everyday’ to examine the daily living patterns and work operations of unregulated miners (zama-zamas) to fully understand their real world, beyond what is peddled by the state, and to argue that unregulated mining activities are orderly and make a significant contribution to the livelihoods of thousands of people in South Africa and the subregion. A thorough examination of their daily work and leisure routines sheds more light on their actual world, which has till now been obscured by government and media reports that emphasise the ‘illegal’ and violent aspects while remaining mute on the positive elements.
This article uses hunger as a lens to explore how the process of state making in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2009 negatively affected the country’s food security. Using Eriksen’s concept of state making, the study demonstrates how the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) ruling regime concentrated more on accumulation and power retention at a time when government was expected to address the serious food shortages that the country was facing. The development of a different kind of state that had repressive and accumulation tendencies was signified in 2000 by the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) which was intended to appease the regime’s various constituencies. Taken together with other populist measures, particularly price freezes, the policies destroyed the country’s capacity to produce and manufacture food and pushed citizens to rely almost entirely on food imports (mainly from South Africa). The paper thus contributes to the literature on the Zimbabwean crisis by offering a different dimension, not only on the process of state making and how it caused hunger, but also on the specifics of how ordinary citizens were literally starving except those who could afford to buy imported food (particularly maize meal) from South Africa.
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