Johannesburg's illegal gold mining: sinkholes, arrests and scapegoats

Dozens of illegal gold miners arrived in late September on the dirt road opposite Claw (Community Led Animal Welfare), an animal charity in Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg, where founder Cora Bailey has treated injured township animals since 1991. As the price of gold has soared, so has activity in the abandoned shafts that mark the area.

The miners – known in South Africa as zama zamas, roughly "to take a chance" in Zulu – began drawing water for panning and processing from Claw's two 25,000-litre tanks, which the city government fills irregularly for the roughly 100 rescued and injured animals on site. Bailey said the charity had never refused them drinking water, but in mid-October it closed its gate at midday for the first time because it had about two buckets left. Police told her the scale of the illegal mining was too big for them to act on, she said; about a week later officers cleared the grass that had partly hidden the miners. A smaller group returned within days, this time taking water only for drinking.

Arrests, deaths and a $1bn trade

South Africa's police regularly highlight their successes against illegal mining, saying on 19 October that 71 suspected zama zamas had been arrested nationwide in the previous week. Researchers, however, put 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, worth about $1bn, was exported illegally. Police operations have also proved deadly: in 2025, 93 bodies were pulled from a shaft in Stilfontein after officers blocked food and water from being delivered underground.

Gold drove Johannesburg's creation after its discovery on a farm in 1884, and South Africa was the world's largest producer for more than a century until 2007. The city government claims 40,000 tonnes of gold remains underground in the region, but recovery costs have risen as the remainder lies deeper. Companies are supposed to seal old shafts, yet mining minister Gwede Mantashe told parliament that in 2025 there were "6,100 derelict and ownerless mines and 1,170 unsafe mine openings". Experts agree most zama zamas come from neighbouring Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Scapegoats for sinkholes?

Ahead of local elections on 4 November, politicians blame illegal miners for sinkholes. In May, Johannesburg council member Kenny Kunene toured journalists around collapses he attributed to zama zamas, including a section of Wemmer Pan Road.

Experts say the miners are being scapegoated. Rosalind Morris, an anthropology professor at Columbia University, said the porous dolomitic rock south and west of the city becomes unstable when water is removed, and that "the biggest culprit of sinkholes in South Africa is formal industrial mining". She said zama zamas do cause some structural collapse, but that the idea it was invented or caused for the first time by them is "completely fallacious". David van Wyk, lead researcher at the Bench Marks Foundation, linked violence – including a September mass shooting in Wedela township – to feuding gangs that control access to shafts, saying the underground workers are "super-exploited cheap labour" while "the guys with the guns are the guys who take the gold".

In Khutsong, about 50 miles (80km) west of Johannesburg, Vusi Cele of Mining Affected Communities United in Action said illegal miners keep the township afloat: "Without those rents, it's a ghost town." Cele, 33, sells mobile phone covers and screen protectors above ground but said he too would mine if he could get a licence. "On the surface there's peanuts," he said. "Underground there's money."

Source: The Guardian.