Now, Ugandan government officials are considering evicting the miners, saying they are not licensed. The government would evict them under eminent domain, compensate them and then open the area to bidders with development plans.
"These people are scratching across the surface, like rats," Edwards Kagimba, the director of geological surveys and mines at Uganda`s Ministry of Energy, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "These are small-scale miners living hand to mouth. They cannot set up a proper mine."
But Kagimba and some other officials believe it would be a politically unpopular move, and perhaps a dangerous one, to try to force some 50,000 people from the land. Uganda holds presidential elections next February or March. Any evictions, if they happen at all, would likely be after the vote.
Some miners say they would fiercely resist any eviction attempt. Many would prefer to be licensed, pointing out that that would also benefit the government as they would consequently be paying taxes.
A Ugandan-led company was officially awarded an exploration license, but it has not had access to most of the areas under its jurisdiction, saying the unlicensed miners have refused to cooperate.
The presence of potential gold deposits here was first discovered by the British colonial government in the 1920s. Then, in the late 1990s, regular visits by potential investors with big plans alerted locals to the existence of a valuable mineral in their midst, and soon Ugandans from other parts of the country were flocking to the area to start small-scale operations as illegal miners. A full-blown gold rush — with speculators buying up plots that they hoped contained gold — started about five years ago, according to veteran dealers.
It`s now like a Deadwood in Africa.
In a mining camp in the village of Lujinji, prostitutes stand provocatively near the entrance of a nightclub which has rooms that stink of sweat. Gold buyers with scales and money changers line dirt pathways. Gold traders` agents sit under tarpaulins, waiting for miners to bring shiny little balls of metal that are burned to remove mercury, which attracts the gold but does not ignite.
All around is a great din from the constant turning of machines that crush stones from which dealers hope to extract gold.
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