Socialist Party and People’s Pact President Dr Fred M’membe emphasised that artisanal mining in Zambia should not be treated as a criminal issue but recognised as part of the wider class struggle.
He underlined that thousands of young Zambians continue to risk their lives in informal pits because access to land, licences, and processing facilities remains concentrated in the hands of foreign capital and a small domestic elite.
Dr M’membe urged the state to place artisanal cooperatives at the centre of mineral extraction, particularly for resources that are relatively easy to mine.
He stressed that collective ownership must be prioritised, with illegal pits converted into worker-run cooperatives supported by state-provided tools, safety equipment, and geological data.
Dr M’membe further proposed the establishment of state-owned buying stations to ensure fair value for minerals, with surplus revenue reinvested into schools, clinics, and infrastructure in mining districts.
He warned that crackdowns only reproduce poverty, insisting that proper planning should incorporate artisanal miners into the national development agenda and transform subsistence digging into a formalised pillar of socialist construction.
Dr M’membe affirmed that Zambia’s wealth lies underground, and under a worker-led model, that wealth would remain within the country to build the nation, shifting extraction from profit-driven motives to serving the people.
