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The South African gold mines taken over by criminal gangs
By Monica Mark
Financial Times, London
Thursday, December 26, 2024
Down a shaft that plunged more than a mile below the earth in South Africa's old mining heartland, a man's life hung in the balance.
After weeks working -- then later, trapped and starved by violent gang leaders -- in the abandoned Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein, he clung weakly to a makeshift pulley winching him to safety this month. Above ground, a dozen men strained under the blistering morning sun, lifting the miner out inch by tenuous inch.
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The man from Mozambique, who was unable to give his name as he collapsed on the ground, was the latest survivor of a standoff that has gripped South Africa for weeks, pitching the police against brutal criminal syndicates who run networks of desperate, impoverished miners known as zama zamas.
The standoff has revealed the scale of criminal infiltration of the informal mining industry, a cornerstone of Africa's most industrialised economy.
South Africa was once the world's top gold producer, but aging infrastructure and muddled policymaking have forced many commercial operators to shut. That has left up to 6,000 disused mines which, with gold prices reaching record highs this year, have become sites of turf wars between notoriously violent gangs competing to smuggle the precious metal. ...
... For the remainder of the report:
https://www.ft.com/content/f9922b1c-bc0c-432d-914c-594aa272f6c0
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