Gold buyers in expensive cars extort rock-bottom prices from Durban Deep’s zama zamas, while the police look on
Text by Christopher Clark. Photos by Shaun Swingler.
On a clear, sunny morning in Durban Deep, a defunct gold mine on Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand gold reef, a group of five Zimbabwean informal miners, known as zama zamas, prepare to go underground. They test their torches, adjust their knee pads, pull balaclavas over their heads and pack meagre rations of white bread and biscuits into dust-covered backpacks.
Freedom*, a softly-spoken 24-year-old originally from Harare, has been working in Durban Deep’s labyrinthine network of abandoned mineshafts for about a year. Without a South African work permit, he’s unable to get formal employment. He says he and his colleagues will sometimes spend a week at a time underground, descending as far as 40 metres below the rocky surface.
“My first experience was very difficult. I was very scared,” Freedom recalls. “Even now, it’s still a pretty frightening feeling being down there. There are a lot of cracks in the rock. You could easily die down there.”