Corporate social responsibility and artisanal mining: Towards a fresh South African perspective

Abstract

In the South African context, legislation around artisanal and small-scale mining largely focusses on small and industrialised mining, making no room for any artisanal type of mining. Consequently, excluding historically disadvantaged people from the mineral riches of South Africa. Artisanal miners are marginalised by default, and often also labelled as illegal. Therefore, the sector is either ignored or suppressed by powerful actors like mining companies and the government. With South Africa's high unemployment rate and rife poverty levels, alternative ways of development are urgently needed. Not enough jobs are being created in the formal sector to absorb unemployed or job-seeking individuals. A failure on the part of mining companies to develop informal sectors like the artisanal mining sector limits socio-economic opportunities for ordinary South Africans, including the poor. In this article, the authors explore the role corporations can play in developing and addressing artisanal mining in the South African context. A significant opportunity for mining companies to boost their ESG (environmental, social and governance) ratings and improve their social license to operate may be harnessed by involving Zama Zama miners in corporate social responsibility efforts. The article concludes by drawing on the work of Bester's 2019 corporate social responsibility framework, explicitly developed for mining companies. The framework can help the formal sector mitigate the risks that artisanal mining poses to formal mining operations and the formal workforce. Moreover, the framework provides practical initiatives that could facilitate artisanal mining regulation, improve artisanal miners' working conditions, and improve women and children's safety in the sector. Developing the artisanal mining sector in this manner can create broader opportunities for members of historically disadvantaged communities to benefit from the rich mineral resources of South Africa.