Some of the country’s illegal miners, known as zama-zamas, have struck it rich. Many others have died underground.
A few years ago, a mining company was considering reopening an old mine shaft in Welkom, a city in South Africa’s interior. Welkom was once the center of the world’s richest goldfields. There were close to fifty shafts in an area roughly the size of Brooklyn, but most of these mines had been shut down in the past three decades. Large deposits of gold remained, though the ore was of poor grade and situated at great depths, making it prohibitively expensive to mine on an industrial scale. The shafts in Welkom were among the deepest that had ever been sunk, plunging vertically for a mile or more and opening, at different levels, onto cavernous horizontal passages that narrowed toward the gold reefs: a labyrinthine network of tunnels far beneath the city.
This story is from the February 27, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the February 27, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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