Zama Zamas Risk It All Underground to Find a Pot of Gold

Move! investigates the plight of illegal miners after 14 bodies, some suspected to be in the trade, were found dead in Gauteng

- Kaizer Ngwenya

HE throws a cigarette butt on the ground and deliberately grinds it with the heel of his old and dust caked leather boot. “You want to know if we have wives and children?” he squints his eyes as  the mid-morning sun hits his lean face. “Yes, I have a wife and five children at home in Vryheid, KwaZulu-Natal. If I don’t do this, my family will starve. My children will not go to school. Now, I hope you understand why we are here and risking our lives.’’

TENSE AND VERY SCARY

Mabhungu looks at the cigarette stompie he has just flattened on the ground as if he regrets why he had to use such force to express his dire situation as a zama zama.

Suddenly, more than 30 illegal miners who have crawled out of the two holes like cockroaches to a sink of unwashed dishes after the lights have been turned off at night, appear. Some illegal miners are known to become very aggressive when strangers approach their turf which they will protect at all cost and by any means necessary.

Mabhungu, who lives at George Gogh hostel, works as one of the security men or sentries above the abandoned mineshaft at Riverlea, south of Joburg. He assures us that we are safe. This is the shaft where three miners were killed after they were suffocated by gases underground last year. And two more died after rock falls.