Stilfontein’s dangerous and desperate illegal mining industry
Zama zamas search for gold in a vast and unmapped underground network of tunnels
An aerial view of the abandoned mine where it is estimated that hundreds of zama zamas remain underground. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee
When zama zamas go hungry deep underground in the abandoned mines where they illegally mine for gold, they sometimes resort to eating a mixture of toothpaste and toilet paper.
“You mix a soft porridge with water,” one of the miners said, miming his belly becoming full. “It hurts to swallow. Your hunger stops for a while.”
He spoke to GroundUp in Stilfontein, the former mining town in North-West province where zama zamas were recently cut off from food for approximately two months as part of a national clampdown on illegal mining dubbed “Vala Umgodi” or “Close the Hole”.
Beginning in late September, police and the military shut down access points used by gold syndicates for delivering supplies underground in an attempt to force the miners to surface. “We are going to smoke them out,” South Africa’s Minister in the Presidency warned.
Last week, the police estimated that as many as 4,500 zama zamas remained underground. They have subsequently revised this figure to a few hundred. Nobody knows for sure how many people are still inside the tunnels, which form an interconnected labyrinth of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of kilometres surrounding some of the deepest mine shafts in the world. In the past two weeks, nearly 1,200 zama zamas have surfaced and been arrested in Stilfontein.
The majority of these miners travelled up and out of the mines via a transport elevator at Margaret Shaft, one of the few operational shafts in the town. The mine, founded in 1949, has not produced any gold in 30 years but now functions as a pump station for groundwater that inundates surviving mines in the area.
It connects via a maze of tunnels to distant abandoned shafts where zama zamas dig for gold, forming part of a highly organised illicit economy that has spread across South Africa’s gold reefs over the past two decades.
A few weeks ago, a warning message typed by the authorities and translated into Sesotho, Xhosa and Tsonga circulated among illegal miners in Stilfontein, urging people underground to “exit at the Margaret Shaft as it is the safest existing exit”.
Footage shared by the police showed hundreds of young men in tattered clothing being hauled out, dripping wet, from areas deep inside the pump shaft. Most of them were from Zimbabwe and Mozambique and will likely be deported.
To get out, some had walked for days from other parts of the tunnel network. There is no official map of this sprawling subterranean system, which was created over decades by different mining companies that bought and sold the mines from each other as the gold reserves were worked out. Even security officials in the area — tasked with guarding the few operational mines, where zama zamas sneak in via abandoned tunnels or bribe mineworkers to smuggle them inside — do not fully understand how the shafts link together.
Many of the men were severely dehydrated and weak with hunger by the time they arrived at the elevator. There have been reports of multiple dead bodies underground, although there is no way of confirming how many.
One zama zama told GroundUp that about a hundred people had died, citing a WhatsApp group used by illegal miners, but this was not possible to verify. (He said that one of the abandoned shafts had been fitted with internet cables, allowing zama zamas to communicate with the surface. This has also been reported in other areas where illegal mining has proliferated.)
Dozens of zama zamas are reported to have died in similar clampdowns in South Africa after supplies were cut off. In 2021, more than 500 zama zamas exited the tunnels in the neighbouring town of Orkney, another illegal mining hotspot, after their food ran out. A few days later, hundreds of the men attempted to force their way back inside, culminating in a shoot-out with officials that left six dead.
Police and mine security experts contend that this approach is necessary for catching large numbers of illegal miners, who can remain underground for months or even years.
Conditions in the abandoned mines are perilous. It is dark, many areas have caved in or flooded, rockfalls are common and temperatures exceed 40 degrees celsius. The humidity is suffocating and there are poisonous gases such as carbon monoxide and methane. Some shafts plunge vertically for more than two kilometres, opening at different levels onto the unmaintained tunnels.
There are also heavily armed gangs underground, controlled by powerful syndicates, who defend their underground turf with assault rifles and shotguns. Some areas are rigged with explosives that can be remotely detonated if rivals or the authorities enter.
Instead of pursuing the miners, the goal of the Vala Umgodi operation was to starve them out.
Ropes and pulleys have been set up to rescue stranded zama zamas. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee
As the clampdown continued, another group of zama zamas became trapped in an abandoned mine ten kilometres south of Margaret Shaft. Formerly known as Buffelsfontein, it was closed down in 2013 and demolished the following year. Buildings were bulldozed, the towering mine headframes dismantled and the shafts capped with concrete.
The mine still contained an estimated 11.8-million ounces of gold, worth a stupefying $30-billion at current prices, but had been incurring steep losses. Deep-level industrial mining is enormously expensive and much of this gold was inaccessible without considerable further investment. Nevertheless, vast quantities of ore remained in the tunnels for people willing – or sometimes coerced – to venture inside and dig for it.
The rise of illegal mining took place amid an unemployment crisis. By 2014, only six of 28 developed shafts in the area, including neighbouring Klerksdorp and Orkney, remained in operation. According to a study that year by the South African Cities Network, three-quarters of the workforce had been retrenched within five years, and the number of people living in poverty had doubled.
A large population of mine labourers, many of them migrants from neighbouring countries, remained in Khuma and Kanana, townships designated for black workers during apartheid. They knew which parts of the old mines were rich in gold. A few years after the Buffelsfontein shafts were sealed off, zama zamas blasted them open and began descending via ropes.
As no companies were actively mining nearby, the area was largely given over to this illicit activity. “We don’t really care,” a mine security official said two years ago. He estimated that two thousand people were living underground.
In late September, with their supplies running low due to the police operation, zama zamas began gathering deep inside one of the Buffelsfontein shafts: an open hole in the ground with sheer concrete sides that plunge vertically for more than two kilometres.
Some of them attempted to walk to Margaret Shaft but turned back after two days, blocked by a section flooded with water. They tried another route and turned back again. They waited in the darkness, subsisting on toothpaste. To hydrate, they drank contaminated groundwater, which made many of them ill.
A note that community volunteers claimed was written by miners underground requesting ARV medication. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee
A large number of the men had chronic diseases – diabetes, chest conditions, HIV – and ordinarily would have been able to purchase medication at heavily inflated prices from the syndicate that controlled the shaft.
Provisioning zama zamas could be equally lucrative as dealing illegally in gold. A litre of bottled water could be sold underground for R100. A six pack of beer cost R1,500. It was possible to purchase gumboots, torch batteries, cigarettes and a cough syrup containing codeine that many of the men became addicted to. These supplies were delivered in bulk down the shafts, with runners paid to carry them to far-away tunnels.
Above ground at Buffelsfontein, community leaders remonstrated with police to allow food into the shaft. With no elevator to ride up, the trapped zama zamas would need to be lifted out another way.
Rescue experts contracted by the mining industry visited the site to assess it. They have specialised winding machines for lowering into deep-level shafts, but the ground surrounding the hole in Buffelsfontein was unstable, strewn with heaps of rubble. It was also unclear who would pay for a rescue operation, which can cost millions of rand.
As these deliberations were ongoing, the police allowed a volunteer rescue operation to begin early last week. A large pulley was suspended over the entrance to the shaft, fastened to several ropes anchored among the rubble. A man was lowered down by hand to communicate with the zama zamas, and the police allowed a delivery of instant porridge packets.
This hole is nearly two kilometres deep. Photo: Kimon de Greef
There wasn’t enough food for everybody and fights broke out, according to men who were subsequently rescued. One man was struck over the head with a rock and had his shoulder dislocated.
Later, a team of men from the community lowered a harness and bright yellow rainsuit into the darkness. (Without ventilation, the combination of heat and water in abandoned mines produces thick steam that rises up the shafts.)
When one of the zama zamas had been fastened to the end of the rope, they methodically began hauling him up, bending their backs in the heat. It took 45 minutes to pull each man nearly two kilometres to the surface.
By last Thursday they had recovered six people, as well as a dead body. Hundreds of men remained underground.
One of the abandoned mine shafts in Stilfontein where zama zamas descend to mine for gold. Photo: Kimon de Greef
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