An Ubuntu-Christocentric Comparison of Gold Mine Companies and the Zama Zama Enterprise in the West Rand District Municipality

ABSTRACT

The recent mass rape of eight women from a team shooting a music video on an unused gold mine dump near West Village, in Mogale City, in the West Rand District Municipality, of Gauteng Province, South Africa sparked a national outcry about Gender-based Violence (GBV) in the country. The men who gang-raped the women are called zama zamas (loosely translated ‘trying to attain luck’). The incident has raised two disturbing developments in the post-1994 South African context. First, statistics show that 1100 women were sexually violated in the first three months of 2022 in South Africa. The current president of the country, Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa, declared GBV a national pandemic in his Covid-19 pandemic speech. Second, it also reminded the nation about the trend of business enterprises placing profit at the expense of poor and vulnerable workers. The article focuses on the second development by applying two Ubuntu values and a Christocentric approach to compare gold mine companies and the zama zama enterprises in the region. It also concludes by proposing an alternative to the problem of illegal gold mining in the region © 2022 Open Access/Author/s - Online @ http// www.pharosjot.com