Once, the Buffelsfontein mine in South Africa employed 18,000 people. But the mine’s closure in 2013 didn’t mean the mining stopped. Instead, an abandoned Buffels became a target for “zama-zamas,” who hunted for gold in its deepest and farthest reaches. This was a world of criminal gangs and hard labor—and it got even more worse when the police stopped letting food in or people out. For The Economist‘s magazine, Liam Taylor tells the horrifying story of exactly what happened.
Those who knew the old Buffels regarded zama-zamas like George and Alfred with a mixture of horror and awe. The mining engineer from Klerksdorp described the conditions as “Dante’s inferno, two kilometres underground”. When I called Bernard Swanepoel, a former boss of Village Main Reef, the company that owned the mine when it closed, he was astonished that anyone was there at all. “I’ve worked on mines all my life,” he said. “If you told me that you could swing someone down a kilometre on a rope I’d have told you exactly how mad you are.”
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