[imagesource: YouTube / BBC News Africa]

Some of the numbers involved in South Africa’s lucrative mining industry are mindboggling.

Consider for a second that Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman took home R300,3 million in 2021 alone and you get an idea of what we’re talking about.

Meanwhile, the strike at Sibanye’s South African gold operations has dragged on for almost three months, with unions requesting that mineworkers are given a raise of R1 000 a month.

In other words, the wealth is not evenly shared across the lucrative industry and that’s just one of the reasons why the so-called ‘zama zamas’ are so prevalent.

Recently, the BBC dug deep into the world of illegal mining:

Every day they go to work, they have no idea whether they will return home alive. Poverty forces them beneath the earth to search for gold. Some will be arrested for illegal mining. Some will die.

BBC Africa Eye meets the migrants who risk everything to go deep underground in South Africa’s dangerous disused gold mines to make a living.

These miners have created an entire underground economy, with some networks featuring spaza shops selling braai meat, loaves of bread, airtime, toilet paper, Amarula, beer, and more.

Desperate times breed desperate measures.

Strap on the head torch and in we go:

[source:bbc]