Metalliferous Mobile Rescue Winder operators look on as a cage is lifted from an abandoned gold shaft in Stilfontein on January 16, 2025. Rescuers racing to clear a disused South African gold shaft of illegal miners said on January 16, 2025 a final sweep appeared to show nobody was left underground, after 78 bodies and more than 200 miners were lifted out this week. That spurred a months-long police crackdown to end the activity. Some miners had been underground for weeks, if not months. At least 246 people have resurfaced since a specialized machine installed on January 13, 2025 sent a cage down the 2.6-kilometer (1.6-mile) shaft near Stilfontein. Since the police operation began in August, a total of 87 bodies have been retrieved and 1,907 miners have resurfaced. (Photo by Linda GIVETASH / AFP)
Johannesburg, South Africa — The derelict Stilfontein shaft, which became a hell hole for hundreds of trapped miners, is just one of 6,000 that have been abandoned by South Africa’s gold extraction companies.
The vast Witwatersrand goldfield, where the Stilfontein mine is located, was the focus of a heady gold rush in the 19th century.
Article continues after this advertisementBut the once-flourishing commercial gold mining industry has gone.
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Now the disused underground galleries attract clandestine workers from across southern Africa, who risk their lives to scrape the last meagre flakes of gold from the walls with hand tools.
Article continues after this advertisementMany of the undocumented workers who eke out a living in these perilous conditions are from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Some are from gangs in Lesotho.
Article continues after this advertisementIn 2015, there were about 30,000, according to a report by the authorities.
Article continues after this advertisementWhile artisanal miners are common across Africa, South Africa’s case is unique in that they work illegally in industrial-scale commercial mine shafts that have been deserted for lack of profitability.
Until 2007, South Africa was the world’s leading producer of gold. By 2022, it had dropped to 11th place, according to the US Geological Survey.
Article continues after this advertisementMining accounted for 21 percent of South Africa’s GDP in 1980, according to the national statistics department. By 2023, that had dropped to just 6.2 percent.
Months undergroundSince August, police and rescue services have brought nearly 2,000 clandestine miners out of the disused shaft near Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg. Of those, 87 were dead.
Of the frail, emaciated men evacuated from Stilfontein, nearly 60 percent were Mozambican. Many others came from Zimbabwe.
“Most South Africans either are employed or have government subsidies… They don’t need to work in informal mining,” explained Robert Thornton, professor of anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand.
The gold deposits in the Witwatersrand basin are now so depleted that mining is back-breaking work.
“You’re getting seven to 15 grammes of gold per tonne of processed rock,” said Thornton, who has written studies on the clandestine miners.
Thornton said that, in general, artisanal miners usually stayed underground for around a fortnight.
Stilfontein’s notorious shaft number 11, where the latest mining tragedy took place, was different.
The shaft is 2.6 kilometers (1.6 miles) deep. Such is the difficulty of accessing the galleries at the bottom that many workers stayed underground for “up to a year”, according to Ayanda Ndabeni, a miner who resurfaced in November.
They can only obtain food and water if it is sent down to them, often through ventilation shafts, said South African journalist Kimon de Greef.
Illegal miners rescued from an abandoned gold mine sit on the floor as rescuers and South African Police Service (SAPS) officers record their details and provide assistance in Stilfontein on January 14, 2025. More than two dozen illegal miners have been rescued and at least 15 bodies recovered from an abandoned gold mine in South Africa, as operations continued on January 14, 2025 to reach potentially dozens more people who have been underground for months. (Photo by Christian Velcich / AFP)
Organized crimeWhen miners manage to glean some gold from their underground ordeal, they may lose their meager pickings to criminal gangs anyway, Thornton said.
Lesotho, which is very poor, has no mining activity, so Lesotho gangs steal gold from the workers, Thornton explained.
The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), an NGO based in Geneva, said in a 2021 report on illicit gold markets in east and southern Africa that the sector was plagued by “violent gang and turf wars”.
But contrary to an accusation commonly bandied about in South Africa, illegal mining is not exclusively the domaine of foreigners.
fowl play goldThornton said there existed a “sort of independent gold territory” around Barberton, near the eastern border with Eswatini, where the miners are “mostly Swazi and South Africans”, not foreigners.
“They protect themselves with guns and militias,” he said.
Key leaders from both organizations graced the clinic inauguration, including Dr. Ruben G. Kasala, Executive Vice President and CEO of TMCO; Dr. Gregorio S. Martinez Jr., Chief Medical Officer of TMCO; Dr. Christopher Napoleon G. Delos Reyes, Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer of TMCO; Mr. Martin Antonio S. Crisostomo, President of LVHAI, and Ms. Mary Jane Regala, Governor of LVHAI.
The rupee INR=IN was quoting at 83.9750 per US dollar compared with its close at 83.9675 in the previous session. The currency had declined to its all-time low of 83.9850 last month.
One of the key reasons the perilous informal mining sector survives is the connivance of established gold dealers.
GI-TOC said a “lack of transparency and regulation of supply chains” facilitated “gold laundering (and) VAT fraud”.
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“Once laundered8k8, gold is exported or smuggled out of the country,” it said, “primarily to the UAE”.
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