After the digging, who remembers?
In the aftermath of the Stilfontein mining tragedy, South Africa must confront not just policy failure but a deeper amnesia: the erasure of women, memory, and indigenous ethics from its extractive economy.
mining
Mining, murder, and the machinery of exploitation
The massacre of artisanal miners in Stilfontein exposes the South African state’s violent allegiance to corporate interests and a long legacy of extraction and dispossession.
The appearance of democracy
The protests against illegal mining in Ghana are revealing how the country's political class still fears an engaged citizenry.
Unearthing Subterranean Knowledge
If the savannas of West Africa are a new corporate mining frontier in the 21st century, it's because it is also home to the world’s longest-standing indigenous gold mining economy.
What needs to fall to what needs to rise
The video playlist from our one-day symposium marking the 10th anniversary of the Marikana massacre—funded by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—is now on YouTube.
We need to talk about wage theft
South African companies can afford to pay their workers a living wage—if not for their commitment to profit shifting, as the case of Lonmin and Marikana showed.
Where do trade unions go from here?
In South Africa, the seismic shifts in unionism triggered by the Marikana Massacre have sadly not resulted in a union movement better equipped to tackle the issues that workers face.
Killing the collective
We know an enormous amount about what precipitated the 2012 Marikana massacre, but relatively little about what is behind the violence there since.
The promise of platinum
Platinum holds promise for a net-zero future. But the promise of platinum cannot be founded on the broken promises endured by those who live in its spaces of extraction.
The earth below the surface
The film, 'We are Zama Zama,' about illegal miners in South Africa, is a social commentary on the failures of post-colonial liberal democracies in Southern Africa.
All that glitters
One corporation's tax tussle with Tanzania holds many lessons for African countries that continue to struggle with the inequitable share of proceeds from their extractive sectors.
What’s “local” labor in Burkina Faso’s mining sector?
In Burkina Faso's mines, the differences between local and foreign workers are significant, especially what they get paid.
‘Bogus companies’ in the DR Congo
Can safety policies in the transnational mining sector in DR Congo break with the past?
Low worker wages and high inequality
How an industrial mine in the Congo reveals the inequity of wage distribution.
Born from the soil
Traditional chiefs and the politics of labor recruitment in Zimbabwe’s platinum mining industry.
Victory over Vedanta
Zambian farmers win ground-breaking legal victory in the UK.
The ruins of a mining economy
The physical and psychic ruins of colonial mining practice in a small town in Liberia.
The Zambian farmers who are suing a mining company in a British court
In January 2019, a group of Zambian farmers brought their fight for justice to the UK Supreme Court, in a case with far-reaching implications for multinational companies.
Cobalt isn’t a conflict mineral
Policymakers need to properly assess the risks to ordinary Congolese people from expanding the “conflict minerals” category.
Sex, beer, and ndombolo
A Congolese writer whose work oscillates between gripping dystopia and humanist celebration.