When South African law-enforcement agents periodically crack down on illegal mining, television cameras invariably find the same subjects: grimy individuals emerging from mine shafts, blinking into the sunlight after long periods underground – weeks or even months, according to some reports. They are handcuffed, paraded before the media, and presented as evidence of headway in the State’s war on the scourge.

But the poor souls are seldom the true villains; they are the worker bees. The queen bees almost never make the evening news. These are the fellows comfortably perched above ground – the syndicate bosses, financiers, politicians, and middlemen whom we have yet to see appearing in court in orange overalls. Instead, they wear designer suits, arrange logistics, launder proceeds and count profits while the foot soldiers, many of whom are driven to South Africa’s disused gold shafts by grinding poverty, risk cave-ins, toxic gases, and bullets from rival groups.

That is why the jailing this month of a Ghanaian political heavyweight convicted of assigning mining rights without approval and facilitating an unlicensed mining operation attracted attention far beyond the West African country’s borders. Bernard Antwi Boasiako, chairperson of the opposition New Patriotic Party’s Ashanti region, will spend the next 20 years behind bars and has been slapped with a $10 000 fine.

Until Boasiako’s apprehension, Africa had become adept at arresting the foot soldiers while leaving those who orchestrate, finance and profit from illegal mining untouched. South Africa’s zama-zama phenomenon illustrates this point vividly. Hundreds of illegal miners have been arrested over the years, many of them undocumented migrants who descend kilometres underground under life-threatening conditions to recover scraps of gold left behind by big mining companies.

But someone buys that gold, someone transports it, someone refines it, someone exports it, someone banks the proceeds.

While the underground miners may earn just enough to survive, those higher up the value chain accumulate fortunes. It’s a business model where they outsource risk while reaping the profits.

South Africa and Ghana – where illegal miners are called galamsey – are not outliers. From the Democratic Republic of Congo’s artisanal mines to Sudan’s conflict-affected goldfields and Zimbabwe’s riverbeds, illegal and informal mining has become one of Africa’s biggest shadow industries.

The numbers are staggering. According to a 2024 study conducted by SwissAid, a development NGO based in Switzerland, no less than 435 t of gold, valued at $31-billion, were smuggled out of Africa in 2022, which works out to more than a ton leaving the continent undeclared daily.

According to the SwissAid study, nearly half of the smuggled gold ends up in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), now one of the world’s principal refining and trading hubs. From there, the gold acquires a veneer of legitimacy before continuing to global markets, including Switzerland and India.

Over the 20-year period to the end of 2022, the UAE imported more than 2 500 t of undeclared African gold valued at more than $115-billion, if SwissAid’s estimates are anything to go by.

The thing about gold is that, unlike diamonds, it leaves few fingerprints, which means that, once smelted, refined and recast, yesterday’s illicit bullion becomes today’s investment bar.

Because of this, the crime scene is not confined to the mine shaft but extends to the boardroom, the airport lounge, the customs checkpoint, and the financial institution through which illicit wealth quietly circulates.

That’s why African governments must rethink what success against illegal mining actually looks like. Tactics that force zama-zamas to emerge from old shafts in Krugersdorp or Welkom as television cameras roll may generate dramatic images and reassuring headlines, but they don’t stamp out the scourge. Once the drama dies down, the queen bees simply find replacement worker bees in those with no choice but to risk life and limb in the bowels of the Earth to provide for their families.

Success will only come about if forensic accounting, financial intelligence, and international cooperation are prioritised over police raids, media conferences and domestic grandstanding.

African governments must also accept the uncomfortable truth that illegal mining on the scale exposed by SwissAid simply doesn’t flourish without protection from powerful interests. Some of these are political. They are right at the front door through which our gold disappears. They must be scrutinised. Intensely.