Illegal gold miners go all out for South Africa's gold as prices hover near record highs

The surge in gold prices has turned Durban Deep, a decaying former mining suburb west of Johannesburg, into a chaotic battlefield of hunger-driven digging, armed stand-offs, and nonstop movement through abandoned land.

Bloomberg reports that four men stand at a muddy pond once used as a backyard pool and pour sludge onto a towel, hoping that grains of gold stick long enough for them to sell.

The place they are working in used to produce more than $155 billion worth of the metal before the mine closed in 2000, when prices were barely above $250 an ounce. Now, the price sits above $4,000.

That number alone is enough to keep thousands of illegal miners risking their lives in ruins once filled with families, gardens, and steady paychecks.

The entire area is broken. Houses are burnt out. Bushes swallow old streets. Gangs from South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique fight for access to waste hills piled up over a century.

One of the men at the pond, a 36-year-old named Vuyo, says they keep going because the higher prices make the long hours worth it. Vuyo leads a crew that works tailings dumps while other groups enter tunnels where dust chokes the air and darkness makes every step a gamble.

Watching miners fight for space as danger climbs

Artisanal mining is illegal in South Africa even though many developing nations allow it. The workers call themselves zama zamas. They use chisels, kneepads, and small lamps to crawl through narrow passages where even police struggle to follow.

A year ago, officers tried to force one group out of a shaft 90 miles from Johannesburg by cutting water and food. After days with no supplies, nearly 2,000 miners came up. At least 78 bodies in advanced decay were recovered. More than 100 people died.

Durban Deep barely has water left. Families who lived there long before this rush have been pushed out. Only a handful remain, mostly the elderly or people too poor or too sick to leave.

Michelle Weedman, who volunteers at a nearby animal shelter, says digging never stops. She says even roads built from mine waste are being torn open for leftover gold. She says police arrive, but the miners scatter fast. She adds that some have armed support, and gunfire is normal at night as groups compete for territory.

Durban Deep once symbolized South Africa’s mining rise. Johannesburg grew because of this very metal in the 1880s. A historian named Duncan Money says the site now shows how poor closures leave communities open to takeover.

The company that ran the mine, now DRDGOLD, once cut shafts 1.7 miles into the Witwatersrand Basin. A geologist named Kgothatso Nhlengethwa, who has studied this area for more than a decade, says the firm could have sealed the shafts more securely. She says miners can enter with little effort. DRDGOLD says the decline came long after it left.

Tracing the metal to buyers and the growing networks behind it

Across Gauteng, illegal digging has spread fast. A researcher named Gregory Mthembu-Salter says the country may lose up to 51 tons a year to this trade.

He says much of it likely ends up in the UAE. South Africa’s legal miners sell to London-linked refiners, none located in the UAE, yet the UAE declared more than $1 billion in imports from South Africa in 2023. A report published November 4 by SWISSAID says the UAE remains a major hub for questionable gold.

SWISSAID estimates that up to 100,000 people now dig illegally nationwide. Officials say the networks damage power lines, rail, and city infrastructure. Workers like Vuyo say police mostly leave them alone except for taking small bribes. Every part of the job carries risk. Groups fight each other. Legal operations clash with illegal ones.

Workers begin by digging waste soil and filling sacks. They wash it and collect small pieces of gold to sell in nearby slums such as Matholesville, where a road is literally named Gold Rush Street, and Braamfischerville, where miners walk past homes with lamps still strapped to their heads. Kgothatso says workers never get full price.

Still, the doubling of gold prices since late 2023 means there is enough money to keep everyone involved. Vuyo says he now earns about 7,000 rand a month.

Foreign miners also take risks because they have no other options. Jealous Madyira, a 46-year-old from Zimbabwe, stands in a polluted stream and strains soil for specks.

He says hunger pushed him out of his home country, where unemployment is severe and many people have left. He says the work is hard, but he needs the pay to survive.

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