In the Shinyanga region of west central Tanzania, one of the poorest in the country, small-scale mining at Bulyanhulu once offered rural people an income about 6 times what they could make from farming. But in August of 1996, less than a year after President Benjamin W. Mkapa took office, that changed. According to eyewitness reports, affidavits, photographs, and even video by Tanzanian police, and in violation of an injunction from the High Court of Tanzania, eight entire settlements around the town of Kakola were razed, an estimated 200,000 miners or more were evicted from the mines, and in the process some 54 miners at Bulyanhulu were buried alive in mineshafts sealed by bulldozers. By July of 2001, the mine, now revamped as a huge high-tech operation, was officially opened with great fanfare by President Mkapa.