In June this year the bodies of 20 suspected illegal miners were found near an abandoned goldmine shaft just outside Johannesburg.
The bodies, wrapped in white plastic bags, were severely burnt. An investigation is now underway to determine the cause of death, but authorities believe these were illegal miners operating in obsolete mine shafts in Orkney and Stilfontein.
Traditionally, South Africa was one of the biggest producers of gold, Mpho Lakaje, a journalist in South Africa, told me. But he says that in the 1970s there was a decline in gold prices and with rising labour and electricity costs, this meant many mines were no longer considered viable and there were widespread closures.
The mines still hold small gold deposits and illegal mining costs the government millions of dollars in lost revenue. That’s why illegal miners known as Zama Zamas, which means “the ones who are trying”, risk their lives every day, he says,
It’s a situation “born out of poverty” and the “perpetrators are people from neighbouring countries”, Job Mokgoro, says the premier of North-West Province in South Africa, where many of these abandoned mines are.
He describes a network that range from the illegal miners, at the bottom of the chain, to distributors often linked to international crime syndicates. He says those who mine the shafts often risk their lives using “rudimentary tools and chemicals”.
Source: BBC
