South Africa “Life underground is brutal, many don’t come out alive”: The underground city where illegal mining is a brutal business

With 600 other men, Ndumiso lives and works in a small gang-controlled “city” – complete with markets and even a red light district – that is located on the outskirts of a disused South African gold mine. Has developed in the mine.

Ndumiso told the BBC that, after being fired by a large mining company, he decided to join a gang in the underground world known as the One. “Zama Zama”An illegal miner.

He searches for precious metals and comes across almost every metal three months To sell it in the black market with huge profits. Now he earns more than before, although the risks are much higher.

“The secret life is cruel. A lot of people don’t come out alive,” says the 52-year-old man, who spoke to the BBC on the condition that his real name not be used for fear of reprisals.

“At a good level there are corpses and skeletons“We call it zama-zama cemeteries,” he explains. But for those who survive, like Ndumiso, the work can be profitable.

While he sleeps on sandbags after tiring days underground, his family lives in a house they bought in a township in the city of Johannesburg.

He says he paid about $7,000 cash for the one-bedroom home, which he expanded to three more bedrooms.

An illegal miner for about eight years, Ndumiso managed to send three of his children to fee-paying schools, one of whom is now going to university.

“I have to support my wife and kids and this is the only way I know,” he says, adding that he would rather go underground than increase the high crime rate by becoming a car thief or a bandit. Like to work. Been trying to find a legitimate job for years.

His current job is at a mine in the small town of Stilfontein, about 145 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg, which made global headlines after a government minister, Khumbudzo Ntshavweni, promised to “blow smoke” into the mines to get them to come out. They were forced to go underground, and with the help of security forces, stopped supplying food and water.

“We should not help criminals. action should be taken against criminalsNtshaveni said.

An activist group, the Society for the Protection of Our Constitution, launched legal proceedings seeking access to the well, which police say is about 2 km deep.

The court issued a provisional ruling, stating that food and other essential items could be delivered to the miners.

Ndumiso works in another shaft at the mine and was exposed to the current standoff last month. Now he is waiting to see how the situation develops before deciding to return.

The impasse follows the government’s decision to crack down on an industry uncontrolledwith mafia gang Who directs it.

Mikateko Mahloule, chairman of the parliamentary committee, said, “The country has been suffering from the scourge of illegal mining for many years, and mining communities bear the brunt of peripheral criminal activities such as rape, robbery and damage to public infrastructure.” Committee on Mineral Resources

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the mine was a “crime scene”, but that police were negotiating with the miners to end the standoff rather than arresting them.

Ndumiso is one of millions of workers – both local and from neighboring countries such as Lesotho – who have been thrown out of jobs as the South African mining industry has declined over the past three decades. Many of them have become “Zama Zama” in abandoned mines.

David van Wyk, a researcher at the Benchmark Foundation based in South Africa, has studied this area and confirmed that some 6,000 abandoned mines In the country.

“Although they are not profitable for large-scale industrial mining, they are profitable for small-scale mining,” he told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast.

Ndumiso said he worked as a driller for a gold mining company, earning less than $220 a month until he was fired in 1996. After struggling for the next 20 years to find full-time work due to high unemployment in South Africa, he decided to become an illegal miner.

there is thousands of illegal miners In South Africa. According to Van Wyk, there are about 36,000 in Gauteng province alone, the country’s economic hub, where gold was first discovered in the 19th century.

“The Zama Zama often live underground for months without coming to the surface and are highly dependent on outside aid for food and other needs. This is difficult and dangerous work,” said a report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

“Some carry pistols, shotguns and semi-automatic weapons to protect themselves from rival mining gangs,” the report said. Ndumiso told the BBC that he has a gun, but also pays a monthly “protection fee” of about $8 to his gang.

Their heavily armed guards protect them from threats, he said, especially from Lesotho gangs, which are known for more lethal firepower.

Under the gang’s round-the-clock security, Ndumiso said he used dynamite to blow up rocks and rudimentary tools such as picks, shovels and chisels to find gold.

He gives most of what he earns to the gang leader, who pays him the minimum US$1,100 every two weekshe says he can keep a portion of goldWhich he sells in the black market to increase his income.

He is one of the lucky miners who has reached such an agreement, and he explains that others are kidnapped and taken to the pit to work as slaves without receiving any payment or gold. goes.

Ndumiso said so casually He remained underground for about three months at a time.And then he would go up for two to four weeks to spend time with his family and sell his gold, before returning to the deeper pits.

“I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed and eating home-cooked food. Breathing fresh air is an incredibly powerful feeling.

If Ndumiso loses his digging spot he does not go out as often, but after three months it becomes very difficult for him to live underground. He remembers that once, when he reached the surface, “he was so blinded by the sunlight I thought I was blind,

His skin had also become so pale that his wife took him for a medical examination: “I was honest with the doctor about where I lived. He didn’t say anything to me and just treated me. “She gave me vitamins.”

On the surface, Ndumiso doesn’t just relax. He also works with other illegal miners to destroy and crush rocks containing ore. His group then “washed” the gold in a makeshift plant to separate it using dangerous chemicals such as mercury and sodium cyanide.

Ndumiso explains that he then sells his share of the gold: one gram costs US$55, which is lower than the official price of about US$77. He says he already has a buyer, whom he contacts through WhatsApp.

“When I first met him I didn’t trust him, so I asked him to meet me in the police station parking lot. I knew I would be safe there. “Now we see each other in any parking lot. We have a scale. We weigh the gold on the spot. I give it to him and he pays me in cash,” he says, adding that he takes between US$3,800 and US$5,500.

He receives this amount every three months, which means his average annual income is between US$15,500 and US$22,000, far more than the US$2,700 he earns as a legal contract miner. Ndumiso claimed that the gang leaders earned a lot, but he did not know how much.

As for the buyer of his gold, Ndumiso said he knew nothing about him, except that he was a white man in an illegal industry that involved people of different races and classes.

This makes it difficult to crack down on criminal networks, and Van Wyk said the government was targeting miners, but “not the ringleaders living in the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg and Cape Town.”

President Ramaphosa said that illegal mining was “costing our economy billions of rands in export revenues, royalties and taxes” and that the government would continue to work with mining companies to “ensure they rehabilitate or mine mines.” Take responsibility for the closure.” No longer operational.”

Van Wyk told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast that South Africa’s economic crisis would worsen if the government cracked down on “Zama Zamas”. “There should be a policy to decriminalize their operations, better organize them and regulate them,” he said.

When Ndumiso returns to work underground, he takes canned food with him to avoid paying the exorbitant prices of the “markets” there.

In addition to food, he says, basic commodities – such as cigarettes, flashlights, batteries – and mining equipment are sold there.

This suggests that a community – or small town – has developed underground over the years, and Ndumiso said there was even a red light district. Sex workers driven underground by gangs,

Ndumiso explained that the mine where he worked consisted of several levels and a labyrinth of interconnected tunnels. He explains, “They are like highways, with signs painted on them indicating how to reach different places and levels, like the level we use as a toilet, or the level we call the zama-zama cemetery.” Are.”

“Some people die at the hands of members of rival gangs; Others die during rock falls and are crushed by huge stones. “I lost a friend when his gold was stolen and he was shot in the head.”

Although life underground is dangerous, it is a risk thousands of miners like Ndumiso are willing to take, saying the alternative is to live and die poor in a country where the unemployment rate exceeds 30%.

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