Vigilante justice in South Africa: “They were the ‘Zama-Zamas’! Hunt them!”

After a mass rape in a Johannesburg mine, illegal gold prospectors are under general suspicion. The anger of the residents, who are also ready to take justice into their own hands, hit them with full force.

They just wanted to shoot a music video, but then they were mugged. Armed and hooded men forced a film crew to throw themselves on the ground, then they proceeded with great brutality: Eight of the 22 crew members were models, young women between 19 and 35 years old. They were brutally raped for hours, some of the women up to ten times. “I closed my eyes and started crying when I saw what they were doing to my girlfriend,” one of the women later testified. “Shortly thereafter, they began to rape me too.”

Then the attackers seized the crew’s valuables and video equipment and entrenched themselves in illegal gold mines that had actually been closed for a long time. The police did not arrive at the scene until an hour later, but eventually apprehended the suspects. Two suspects were shot dead and more than 120 arrested. Seven have now been charged with rape.

Then local residents began hunting down other suspects. Years of pent-up anger erupted, mixed with a healthy dose of xenophobia. For the residents it was immediately clear: “They were the ‘Zama-Zamas’! Hunt them!”

“The police are doing nothing,” say local residents

‘Zama-Zamas’ are illegal prospectors who look for the remains of the precious metal in disused mines – whereby “gold mine” is a grandiose word in this context: mostly there are only self-dug holes in the ground, under which there are caves in which small amounts of gold are still suspected. There are thousands of these abandoned mines around Johannesburg.

About two-thirds of the ‘zama-zamas’ digging in it are illegal immigrants from Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi. But there are also South Africans who became unemployed after the mines were shut down. ‘Zama-Zamas’, which means “We’re trying – we’re really trying!”. They have set up a parallel society at the closed gold mines, in which only their own laws should apply.

There is a high probability that it really was ‘Zama-Zamas’ who committed the horrific mass rape, but it has not yet been proven. The local residents have long been assuming this – and are acting. Armed with sticks, axes and hammers, they forced their way into the huts of the ‘Zama-Zamas’, dragged out their poor belongings and set them on fire, finally burning down the huts as well. Many of the illegal mines have been filled in.

“We have to do this,” said a local resident about the hunt. “We can’t do anything else, the police aren’t doing anything.” A spokesman for the governing party ANC said: “We have launched an open hunt for illegal aliens. They must no longer feel safe in South Africa.” He also didn’t say a word that almost 30 percent of the ‘Zama-Zamas’ are South Africans. In the days that followed, the police only managed with difficulty to prevent the residents from lynching.

Evidence continues

Local residents accuse the police of not doing anything about the illegal prospectors for years: Most of the time, they would not even show up at the scene when a crime was reported. “We feel for the victims,” ​​said a local resident. “But here, in our community, rape is almost the norm. It happens every day.” In some areas, the situation is so bad that residents themselves have imposed a curfew from 6 p.m.

Finally, some of the local residents even accused the police of receiving bribes from the ‘Zama-Zamas’ so that they could commit their crimes scot-free: the gold prospectors alone are responsible for the crime rate in the illegal gold mines, which is immensely high even by South African standards. According to official crime statistics, one rape is committed in South Africa every twelve minutes. In reality, there are many more, because the vast majority of rapes go unreported.

The medical evidence of the mass rape at the video shooting group will take a few more days, DNA analyzes have been ordered. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa condemned the terrible act, but also warned against vigilantism.

There is also a police minister in his government. The man’s name is Bheki Cele and he spoke up a few days after the gang rape. He had heard that one of the young women, unlike the others, had only been raped once. She was lucky there again, said Cele. Strangely enough, the man has not yet had to resign.