Promise of a single gram of gold beckons the brave but desperate zama-zamas
It is dangerous‚ often fatal‚ but illegal underground gold mining is pretty much all that sustains the economy of Lindelani‚ a sprawling township of tin shacks and shebeens near Benoni‚ to the east of Johannesburg. Try as they might‚ the police are powerless to combat an industry that the government‚ mining houses and trade unions want stamped out. In Lindelani‚ and neighbouring Kingsway‚ each morning thousands of young men squeeze through tiny openings into abandoned underground mines‚ armed with chisels‚ hammers and battery-powered torches. Underneath Johannesburg‚ from Springs in the east to Roodepoort in the west‚ a network of disused mine tunnels probably several thousand kilometres in length stands as a monument to the city’s former glory years as the gold centre of the world. The golden years are gone‚ leaving a rabbit warren of subterranean passages now occupied by these men and the gangs to which they owe fealty. The police occasionally confiscate a sack of rock and some eq...
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