‘Gun fights and mass graves’ – Inside South Africa’s deadly illegal gold mines

The Bunker

Podmasters

News, Politics, Society & Culture, Government

4.6 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gun battles, mass graves, and explosions – that’s not a description of a battlefield, but of an illegal gold mine in South Africa. Gold mining propped up the nation’s economy for over a century, and still today countries like the UK trade millions for its gold. But a huge price crash in the late 90s put tens of thousands of miners out of a job. Since then, a literal criminal underworld has risen, operated by illegal miners named the Zama-Zamas, who risk their lives everyday in abandoned mine shafts that could collapse any minute. Kimon de Greef is a journalist who has investigated all this for The New Yorker. He joins Dipo Faloyin in the Bunker to explain what drives the Zama-Zamas and where their gold goes. • “Up until the end of apartheid, Gold was the bedrock of South Africa’s economy.” – Kimon de Greef. • “It’s like something out of the most dystopian science fiction, down there, but it’s real.” – Kimon de Greef. • “Gold really explains a lot of South Africa’s social history.” – Kimon de Greef. www.patreon.com/bunkercast Presented by Dipo Faloyin. Written and Produced by: Chris Jones. Audio production: Alex Rees. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Music by Kenny Dickinson. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
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1:14.2	South Africa was the world's biggest exporter of gold just over a decade ago
1:18.2	and it had been that way since the 1800s when huge deposits were discovered just outside of Johannesburg.
1:25.3	That discovery in part even led to war between the Boer republics and the British.
1:30.3	Now skip forward to the 21st century and the industry has all but collapsed.
1:34.5	From that has emerged a criminal economy of illegal gold miners called the Zama Zamas,
1:38.9	translated into English from Zulu as those who strive.
1:43.2	But this literal criminal underworld is extremely dangerous.
1:46.5	And only a week of so ago, President Cyril-Amoposa
1:49.6	ordered thousands of military personnel
	...

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