South Africa, the world’s top gold producer, has launched a crackdown against ”pirates” who live for months in the bowels of abandoned pits, plundering booty worth millions of rands.
Known as the ”Zama Zama”, which means ”Let’s try our luck” in Zulu, the so-called ”gold pirates” have struck terror among local miners as well as police by setting up booby traps and homemade bombs to keep them away.
Meanwhile, South African police have turned up the heat, staging several operations to ferret out the bandits — some of whom have lived up to two years underground, braving the searing heat and poisonous fumes to seek instant riches.
Some appear unrepentant, such as 26-year-old Samuel, who did not want his full name used. Samuel watched as police raided what they described as the world’s largest illegal gold-smelting house in the mining town of Welkom, south of Johannesburg.
”Gold is the only way to survive in this country,” he said. ”I’m a mobster. You have to go down and get it yourself.”
Samuel once spent four straight months underground, thereby earning R80 000. ”It’s like being in jail, there is no water and you can’t get food easily. You have to sleep on rocks, it’s really hot,” he said.
The raided facility, known as the G-Hostel, provides an intricate link in the gold-smuggling process between the illegal miners who bring up gold-bearing rock and syndicates who then buy nuggets for about R100 a gram.
Once underground, the pirates buy food from legitimate miners, paying exorbitant sums. A loaf of bread costs about R20 — four times its market price — and a chicken’s price at R120 is just as expensive.
Samuel emerged from the mine richer by R65 000 after paying his ”connections” — corrupt police officers and security guards who help the smugglers to get down the shafts.
Mike Fryer, a police official in charge of an underground bust that netted 60 pirates, said his men face an uphill task while staging raids. ”It’s not natural light, it is very warm and the humidity is very high. There are dangerous gases and the places they work in are very dangerous for rock falls,” he said.
The illicit miners also face peril, and some perish. In case of death, Fryer said, the pirates leave the corpse in a shaft lift used by legitimate miners, with a note containing his family’s contacts.
There have been reports that some of the pirates have girlfriends or comfort women sent down to them but Samuel dismissed this, saying: ”It’s too hot down there for that.”
Police captain Neels van der Merwe, who heads up a unit looking into the theft of precious metals, said corruption is a major problem.
The G-Hostel is insalubrious with shards of glass and rubbish littered around small streams set up to wash the gold. There are holes in the ground left behind by pestles used to break down gold-bearing rock. The smugglers then use an adapted gas bottle to spin the crushed rock with iron balls and mercury and grind it down into gold dust.
The past two police raids at G-Hostel have yielded more than five tonnes of gold dust, which smugglers wash with water and mercury to form a silver amalgam. This, when burned with a cutting torch, forms gold nuggets. Many suffer from mercury poison as the toxic substance seeps through the skin to attack the brain and kidneys.
South Africa is still the world’s largest gold producer, although dwindling output and a strengthening rand are weakening the industry, along with more than R2-billion lost every year through gold theft.
Part of South Africa’s high crime levels, including gold smuggling, lie in the fact that nearly one-third of the country’s active workforce is unemployed.
”It’s a crime world,” says Van der Merwe, pointing to the scores of barefoot children running around the G-Hostel, who he says will probably grow up to become gold pirates. — Sapa-AFP