World

Illegal Gold Mining in Johannesburg Spurs Water Shortages, Sinkholes and Political Blame

By Rachel Savage

Cora Bailey has dealt with illegal miners since she began treating injured animals in the Roodepoort townships in 1991. As gold prices rose, activity in abandoned mine shafts increased. In late September, dozens of zama zamas—illegal miners whose name means “to take a chance” in Zulu—arrived to dig for gold along the dirt road from Bailey’s charity, Claw (Community Led Animal Welfare). They began taking water from Claw’s two 25,000‑litre tanks, which are filled irregularly by the city for the roughly 100 rescued animals on site. “We’ve asked them really nicely and haven’t ever refused them water to drink … But, for the first time ever, we closed the gate at 12 [midday], because we literally had about two buckets of water left,” Bailey said in mid‑October. Police told her the scale of the mining was too large for them to manage. About a week later, officers cut away the grass that had partly hidden the miners, but a smaller group returned a few days later, taking only water for drinking. South Africa’s police regularly tout successes in tackling illegal mining. On 19 October, they announced 71 arrests of suspected zama zamas nationwide in the previous week, while researchers estimate the number of illegal miners in the tens of thousands. In 2019, Marcena Hunter of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime estimated that a tenth of South Africa’s gold production—about $1 billion—was exported illegally. Police operations have also led to tragedy; in 2025, 93 bodies were recovered from a mine shaft in Stilfontein after officers blocked food and water from being delivered underground. The dynamics driving illegal mining—high gold prices, poverty, unemployment, corruption, police profiteering and the failure of mining companies to seal abandoned shafts—remain unresolved. South Africa’s modern history is tied to mining. Gold was discovered on a farm in 1884, sparking a rush that created Johannesburg. Gold production peaked in the 1970s; South Africa was the world’s largest producer for more than a century until 2007. In 2009, Morris Viljoen of the University of the Witwatersrand estimated that the reef giving the university its name had produced more than a third of the gold ever mined globally. Claw operates in the former offices of the Durban Deep mine, which closed at the turn of the century and lent its name to an Elton John song. The city government claims 40,000 tonnes of gold remain underground in the region, but deeper deposits raise recovery costs. Mining companies are required to seal old shafts and rehabilitate surrounding land, yet in 2025 there were 6,100 derelict and ownerless mines and 1,170 unsafe openings, according to mining minister Gwede Mantashe. Zama zamas occupy the voids left in the earth. While no comprehensive data exist, experts agree most are from neighbouring countries, mainly Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The Johannesburg skyline is marked by pale yellow mine dumps, and the ground increasingly caves open. For politicians seeking votes in the local elections on 4 November, illegal miners are blamed. In May, Johannesburg council member Kenny Kunene took journalists to sinkholes he said were caused by zama zamas, including a collapsed section of Wemmer Pan Road that once linked the city’s central business district to the south‑eastern suburbs. The road has disappeared in places, leaving raw earth pitted with holes from mining. However, experts say zama zamas are scapegoated for sinkholes. Rosalind Morris, an anthropology professor at Columbia University who has worked with illegal miners, explained that the porous dolomitic rock south and west of Johannesburg becomes unstable when water is removed. “The biggest culprit of sinkholes in South Africa is formal industrial mining, which dewaters at a scale of hundreds of millions of gallons of water removed from underground every day,” she said. “There are areas where there is a lot of residual gold, which are being very intensely mined by zama zamas, and some of that definitely causes structural collapse, there’s no doubt about it. But the idea that this was invented or caused for the first time by zama zamas is completely fallacious.” Zama zamas are also blamed for violence in mining areas, including a September mass shooting in Wedela township west of Johannesburg. David van Wyk, lead researcher at Bench Marks Foundation, said culpability lies with feuding gangs that control shaft access. “The guys working in the mine are actually super‑exploited cheap labour … The guys with the guns are the guys who take the gold,” he said. “They don’t go underground.” In Khutsong, about 50 miles (80 km) west of Johannesburg, illegal miners—both local and foreign—kept the township afloat, said Vusi Cele, youth secretary for the local branch of Mining Affected Communities United in Action, a campaign group that advocates granting artisanal miners mining licences. “Without those rents, it’s a ghost town,” he said. Cele, 33, now sells mobile phone covers and screen protectors above ground but said he would mine if he could obtain a licence. “On the surface there’s peanuts,” he said. “Underground there’s money.”