Together with around 600 other men, Ndumiso lives and works in a small, gang-controlled ‘town’ – complete with markets and a red-light district – that grew up deep underground in a disused gold mine in South Africa.
Ndumiso told the BBC that after being fired by a major mining company, he decided to join the gang in the underground world and become a so-called ‘zama zama’, an illegal miner.
He digs for the precious metal and surfaces every three months or so to sell it on the black market for a huge profit, making more money than ever before – although the risks are now much greater.
“Underground life is brutal. Many don’t make it out alive,” said the 52-year-old, who spoke to the BBC on condition his real name not be used because he feared reprisals.
‘On one level of the shaft there are bodies and skeletons. We call it the zama-zama cemetery,” he said.
But for those who survive, like Ndumiso, the job can be lucrative.
While he sleeps on sandbags after grueling days underground, his family lives in a house he bought in a township of the capital, Johannesburg.
He made cash payments of 130,000 rand (about $7,000; £5,600) for the one-bedroom house, which he has now expanded with another three bedrooms, he said.
Ndumiso has been an illegal miner for about eight years and has managed to send his three children to fee-paying schools, one of whom is now in college.
“I have to take care of my wife and children and this is the only way I know,” he said, adding that he preferred to toil underground rather than add to the high crime rate by becoming a car hijacker or a robber. after spending a lot of money. Years of trying to find legal work.
His current job is at a mine in the small town of Stilfontein, about 90 miles southwest of Johannesburg, which has become the focus of global attention after a minister, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, promised to “fumigate” the hundreds of mines. of miners who found themselves underground there, while security forces prevented food and water from being sent down.
“Criminals should not be helped. Criminals must be prosecuted,” Ntshavheni said.
A campaign group, The Society for the Protection of Our Constitution, has launched a lawsuit seeking access to the mine shaft, which police say is about 2km deep.
The court issued an interim ruling, stating that food and other essential items can be delivered to the miners.
People who have emerged from the mine in Stilfontein are reportedly weak and sickly [Reuters]
Ndumiso works on another shaft at the mine and surfaced last month, before the current standoff.
He is now waiting to see how the situation develops before deciding whether to return.
The standoff follows a government decision to crack down on an industry that has gone out of control and is run by mafia-like gangs.
“The country has been grappling with the scourge of illegal mining for years, and mining communities have been hardest hit by peripheral criminal activities such as rape, robbery and damage to public infrastructure, among others,” said Mikateko Mahlaule, chairman of the parliamentary committee. on mineral resources.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the mine was a “crime scene” but that police were negotiating with the miners to end the standoff, rather than arresting them.
“Law enforcement authorities have information that some of the miners may be heavily armed. It is well known that illegal miners are recruited by criminal gangs and form part of wider organized crime syndicates,” he added.
Ndumiso was among hundreds of thousands of workers – both locals and nationals of neighboring states such as Lesotho – who have been retrenched as South Africa’s mining industry has declined over the past three decades. Many of these later became “zama zamas” in the abandoned mines.
South Africa-based Benchmark Foundation researcher David van Wyk, who has studied the industry, said there are about 6,000 abandoned mines in the country.
“While they are not profitable for large-scale industrial mining, they are profitable for small-scale mining,” he told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast.
Ndumiso said he worked as a drilling operator, earning less than $220 a month for a gold mining company, until he was fired in 1996.
After struggling to find full-time work for twenty years due to South Africa’s crushingly high unemployment rate, he decided to become an illegal miner.
There are tens of thousands of illegal miners in South Africa, with Van Wyk saying there are about 36,000 in Gauteng province alone – the economic heart of the country, where gold was first discovered in the 19th century.
“Zama zamas often spend months underground without emerging and rely heavily on outside support for food and other necessities. It is hard and dangerous work,” said a report by campaign group Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
“Some carry pistols, shotguns and semi-automatic weapons to protect themselves from rival mining gangs,” it added.
Ndumiso told the BBC that he did own a gun, but that he also paid his gang a monthly “protection fee” of about $8.
The heavily armed guards are fending off threats, especially from Lesotho gangs who have more lethal firepower, he said.
Under the gang’s 24-hour protection, Ndumiso said he used dynamite to destroy rocks and rudimentary tools such as a pickaxe, shovel and chisel to find gold.
He gives most of what he finds to the gang leader, who pays him at least $1,100 every two weeks. He said he was able to keep some gold, which he sells on the black market to supplement his income.
He was among the lucky miners who had such an arrangement, he said, explaining that others were kidnapped and taken to the shaft to work as slave laborers, without any pay or gold.
The South African mining industry has long been an important source of employment for both locals and foreign nationals [Getty Images]
Ndumiso said he normally stayed underground for about three months at a time, then emerged for two to four weeks to spend time with his family and sell his gold before heading back into the deep pits.
“I’m looking forward to sleeping on my bed and eating home-cooked meals. Breathing fresh air is an incredibly powerful feeling.”
Ndumiso doesn’t come out more often in case he loses his digging spot, but after three months it becomes too much to stay underground.
He recalled that when he reached the surface, “I was so blinded by the sunlight that I thought I had gone blind.”
His skin had also become so pale that his wife took him for a medical check-up: “I was honest with the doctor about where I lived. He didn’t say anything and just treated me. He gave me vitamins.”
Above ground, Ndumiso doesn’t just relax. He also works with other illegal miners, blasting ore-bearing rocks brought up from below and grinding them into fine powder.
This is then ‘washed’ by his group in a makeshift factory to separate the gold using dangerous chemicals such as mercury and sodium cyanide.
Ndumiso said he then sells his share of the gold: one gram for $55, less than the official price of about $77.
He said he has a ready buyer, whom he is contacting via WhatsApp.
“The first time I met him I didn’t trust him, so I told him to meet me in a police station parking lot. I knew I would be safe there.
“Now we meet in every parking lot. We have a scale. We weigh the gold on the spot. I then hand it to him, and he pays me in cash,” he said, noting that he walks away with between $3,800 and $5,500.
He receives this amount every three months, meaning his average annual income is between $15,500 and $22,000 – much more than the $2,700 he earned as a legally employed miner.
Ndumiso said the gang leaders earned much more, but he did not know how much.
South Africa’s gold mines are among the deepest in the world [Getty Images]
As for the buyer of his gold, Ndumiso said he knew nothing about him except that he was a white man in an illegal industry involving people of different races and classes.
This makes it difficult to control the criminal networks, with Van Wyk saying the government was targeting miners – but not the “majors living in the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg and Cape Town”.
Mr Ramaphosa said illegal mining is costing “our economy billions of rand in lost export revenues, royalties and taxes”, and that the Government will continue to work with mining companies “to ensure they take responsibility for rehabilitating or closing mines that are not be operational for longer. “.
Mr Van Wyk told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast that the government would worsen South Africa’s economic crisis if it tackled the ‘zama zamas’.
“There should be a policy to decriminalize their activities, to better organize and regulate them,” he added.
When Ndumiso returns to work underground, he takes boxes of canned food with him to avoid paying the exorbitant prices at the ‘markets’ that exist there.
In addition to food, basic items – such as cigarettes, torches, batteries – and mining tools were sold there, he said.
This suggests that over the years a community – or small town – developed underground, with Ndumiso saying there was even a red light district, with sex workers brought underground by the gangs.
Ndumiso said the mine where he worked consisted of several levels and a labyrinth of tunnels connected to each other.
“They look like highways, with signs painted to give directions to different places and levels – like the level we use as a toilet, or the level we call the zama-zama cemetery,” he said.
“Some are killed by rival gang members; others die during rock falls and are crushed by huge boulders. I lost a friend after he was robbed of his gold and shot in the head.”
Although life underground is dangerous, it is a risk that thousands of people like Ndumiso are willing to take because they say the alternative is to live poor and die in a country where the unemployment rate is over 30%.
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[Getty Images/BBC]
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