The River Okame, which lies 500 kilometres from Kampala, Uganda’s capital, keeps a very public secret on its banks. The Gold veins that spurn most of the country’s eastern region enter into its banks, and have spurned a dirty illegal industry, that has seen fathers abandon families and children abandon school in the search for an easy payout.

Joseph Mangeni and his father filtering gold

The River Okame is found in Buteba sub-county Busia district on the border with Kenya.

Busia district is one of the 4 gold mining districts in Eastern Uganda the others being Namayingo, Bugiri and Mayuge districts. And in Busia every morning, 10-year-old Joseph Mangeni stands barefoot on the banks of this river filtering gold in one of its muddy streams.

Mangeni does not go to school and is actually employed by his father in their small gold mining Business.

His father Antonio Masinde, says that the ten-year-old regularly attends school, something neighbours and teachers in Ajuket primary school, dispute and reject as a lie.

It’s just business

Miners sieving gold crystals from Muddy water in Bugiri 348km (216miles) east of Kampala, Uganda’s capital.

One of the teachers Annette Nekesa says that most boys in the school have abandoned education, and actually prefer to work in the gold mines.

“[In] gold mining, they get quick money unlike at school where teachers want them to pay money for scholastic materials and food,” Nekesa says.

She says, there is nothing in Buteba sub-county and other rural areas, which can keep students in school since the teachers and parents, who would have encouraged them to seek education, are also involved in gold mining.

This is the environment that has forced over 2.7 million children in Uganda into children labour and according to a report by Uganda’s ministry of gender, labour and social development, Joseph Mangeni, is one of the 1.7 million who are involved in the most hazardous form of Child labour.

A Crime everyone ignores

It’s illegal for children under the age of 12 to work in Uganda, according to the country’s 2006 Employment Act.

Children ages 12 to 14 can engage in light work, under adult supervision, during daytime hours after school.

Government officials can also prohibit children from working if they choose to do so in writing.

On the other hand, Uganda’s children act states that children should not take part in employment or activities that endanger their health, education or development.

Anybody who exposes children to these activities would be jailed for 6 months and also subjected to a fine.

However, this fine print appears to have been ignored when it comes to the illegal and unregulated artisanal mining industry.

Research done by the Netherland based Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) found that of the 50,000 artisanal miners in Uganda; over 30 percent are children.

This means that there are over 15,000 Ugandan children are involved in artisanal mining, an illegal industry that produces over 2.8 tonnes of gold per year.

The majority of Uganda’s artisanal gold mining is unlicensed and the production is therefore not reflected in national statistics.

Uganda’s industrial mines closed down in the 1970s and today most of the gold coming out of Uganda is mined illegally and then the bulk is exported to the United Arab Emirates.

When I was allowed to speak to Joseph by his parents, we took a long walk and during this walk, Joseph who spoke in his native Samia language (widely spoken on the Kenya- Uganda border) said he actually doesn’t miss going to school with his friends because all his friends work in the mines, and they even play together when their parents don’t assign them work.

Asked why he likes to work in the mines, Joseph said he gets paid and every day he gets to buy anything he wants with the money he is given, and he doesn’t have to beg anyone for money.

Joseph walks to the mining site a distance of about 5 kilometres every morning. At the site, Joseph says his father assigns him and his mother with the job of grinding the gold rocks he digs from underground into dust, then they use mercury or cyanide is used to make the gold dust in the tailings stick together into one piece. The pieces are then burnt to purify the gold.

The purified piece is then weighed and sold to waiting middlemen who always hang around the mines waiting to buy from whoever hits a jackpot.

Joseph and his family like many of their neighbours are artisanal miners.

This means that they don’t have mining location licences that everyone needs to be able to mine explore minerals in Uganda.

According to the Commissioner in charge of the Eastern region at Uganda’s department of geological survey and mines (DGSM) Nathan Mutsesya, Artisanal miners/small-scale miners are not legally recognized by the law in Uganda.

‘’In Uganda, all minerals no matter where they are, belong to the government, and people who own land that has minerals only have surface rights on that land and need a license from the government to mine what is underground’’ He says.

The government conveniently ignores artisanal miners because they do not have the capacity to exhaust all the gold in the ground.

However, because these districts have no job or business opportunities the economic activity in itself offers a way out for many.

The governor of the central bank Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile at a press conference in 2016 wondered where the gold Uganda was exporting came from when he realized the country was exporting more as much gold as its largest export i.e. coffee, yet there was no sizeable gold mining operation in the country.

Official figures from Bank of Uganda (BOU) show that the country earned at least $300m (Shs 1tn) from gold between January and October in 2016, slightly lower than what was got from coffee, the country’s main cash crop export.

This was a 740 percent rise compared to what was earned last year, where total gold exports were $35.7m. Uganda earned around $340m in coffee exports over the last ten months.

However, these huge figures don’t even reach the children whose lives are put in danger daily in the process of extracting this gold.

The district information officer Busia district Moses Mangeni says children like Joseph are paid between Shs 1,000 and 2,000 for every basin of gold stones pounded into powder with gold.

‘’So, how much money is that compared to the child’s education,” Mangeni Asks. “If the situation continues like this, the district will be affected more in the near future.” He warns.

Mr Mangeni’s warning is not restricted to just his district, the neighbouring Namayingo district which has some of the biggest mining camps in Eastern Uganda the district’s community development officer Samuel Balyejusa says he has had a continuing fight with the miners at Nakudi mining camp over the same issue.

‘’If us as the government, we don’t take interest in this issue, we are going to lose a generation of children and yet this gold is just here for a time and will be finished.’’ He says.

Balyejusa says that sometimes he deploys police at the mines to ensure that there are no children working in the mines.

‘’Every week I go down there (mines) with the police, and arrest parents who are using their children in the mines, but the moment you fine them, they will be released and they go back to what they were doing before’’ He says.

Health fears, yes but what can we do?

A miner displays a bottle of mercury which is used to attract gold crystals from sand. The miners mix crushed excavated soils with mercury which forms a mixture with gold. It is later heated to separate the gold.

Joseph Mangeni uses mercury oxide to help him extract the gold from the tailings, but while at it, he is exposed to the harmful effects of mercury poisoning, which could result in death.

The World Health Organization (WHO)in a 2014 report on the health effects of mercury on children and women of childbearing age, says exposure to mercury is the biggest health hazard facing small-scale and artisanal gold miners.

The report also exposes a shocking fact, that exposure to mercury can be passed from a mother to her unborn child.

In the report, WHO also warns of threats to the immune system, neurological, and Kidney disorders, all caused by exposure to mercury.

Uganda’s national environment management regulations of 1999 also recognize the harmful effects of mercury and its associated compounds and provide guidelines for the handling as well as transportation of such chemicals. On the other hand, the Uganda Revenue Authority’s customs importation and exportation frameworks are not very clear on mercury oxide. Consequently, mercury oxide is imported into the country illegally and is also smuggled in from Kenya.

Joseph Gyagenda a specialist doctor at St Josephs’ catholic hospital Nsambya in suburban Kampala told this reporter that mercury is a heavy metal that could not easily be absorbed by living organisms, including humans, and could cause permanent mental disability and a range of other conditions.

This is what children in the mines are faced with. Joseph’s father does not seem to see a problem with having his son work with him, even after I pointed out the dangers in terms of health and the fact that the boy should be in school.

He insists he only works there when he is free, and he is able to learn important life skills. ‘’If he doesn’t make money here, where will he go to look for money?’’ He asks.

However, these are not the only hazards that children face every time they walk into an illegal mine for work.

Because of the rudimentary methodology, mounds of tailings stand several meters high lie on the edges of the pits that are sometimes more than 50 feet deep.

Some of the miners digging pits at Nakudi mining camp

A walk around Nakudi mining site in Namayingo district, in Eastern Uganda, shows deep open-abandoned pits littered all over the place.  some pits are even obscured by thickets.

 

“On a rainy day, accidents are imminent as the loose earth simply collapses into the pit,” Lubanga Ronald one of the miners I met at Nakudi states.

When digging tunnels into the ground, the miners do not put re-enforcements on the walls of the tunnels. According to Batambuze Methuselah, the Community Development officer of Budhaya Sub-county in Bugiri district, this can make the walls collapse during the rainy season.

These pits expose children like Joseph who work in these mines to danger every day they show to work.

According to Batambuze, four people have lost their lives after pits collapsed on them.

“People here just mine, and if they find no gold, they abandon the pit and start digging another one without filling the hole created,” Batambuze narrates, adding that even storage of tailings has become a challenge in the area.

These are the things Joseph goes through every day he shows up at the river Okame.

Uganda’s mining policy envisages laws that get children completely out of the mines. unfortunately, it just envisages these laws.

Gold miners in Busia district in eastern Uganda

Nathan Mustesya the commissioner in charge of the eastern region says the solution they have now is to bring the artisanal miners into the system

‘’We are working with NGOs like ActionAid to help these miners form associations, we register them, and enforce the laws with positive results. For now, everyone here is on their own and it is hard to punish offenders’’ He says.

According to Mustesya, this will ensure that children are completely kept out of the mines, and will also ensure that things like protective gear for miners are a must.

Maybe an association is the silver bullet that will change the course of an entire generation and get young Joseph back into school.

Editor:  In 2006 and 2007, the Uganda’s officially reported gold production was 0.022 (22 kg) and 0.025 tonnes (25 kg), respectively; however, exports in the same years were reported at 6.9 (6,900 kg) and 3.57 tonnes (3,570 kg).42 While the linkages with gold smuggled from neighbouring DRC and exported through Uganda traders were already revealed in 2002 by the UN Group of Experts, there is still a substantial proportion of exported gold seems to be derived from in-country artisanal miners.  kg).

According to Uganda’s license register, there are twelve formal small-scale gold mines and four large-scale mines in 2015 (see Table 1). These account for the official gold production statistics in Uganda.

Collins Hinamundi is a top three finalist for Media Monitoring Africa’s Isu Elihle Awards which aim to encourage innovative and insightful reporting on children in Eastern and Southern Africa. This story was produced with the support of the awards and its partners.