Photos: The perilous lives of miners in South Africa's abandoned mines

By Text and photos by Tommy Trenchard

Published August 23, 2025 at 6:53 AM EDT

Artisanal coal miner Emmanuel Siyabonga hauls a sack of coal to a client's car at the abandoned Golfview coal mine in Ermelo, South Africa. The work is grueling and hazardous but is one of the few viable means of making a living in a town with widespread poverty and high rates of unemployment.

When Emmanuel Siyabonga was a boy, he wasn't fussy about the type of job he wanted when he grew up. Other boys dreamed of being footballers, doctors, soldiers. All Siyabonga wanted, he says, was a job that made him happy. He was born in 1994, the year Nelson Mandela came to power in South Africa ending centuries of exploitative white rule and ushering in a new era of hope for Black South Africans.

On an overcast day in March, he lay slumped in the dirt outside a derelict coal mine in the eastern province of Mpumalanga. His eyes were clenched shut, and his head throbbed in pain as he struggled to catch his breath. He'd just hauled a 110-pound sack of coal up 84 steep concrete steps to the surface from a mineshaft contaminated with toxic gas.

The job does not make him happy.

"Bit by bit it's killing something inside me," said Siyabonga, who's been doing this work since losing his job as a cook at a grilled meat stand three years ago and who turned 31 this year. "We're struggling here."

Artisanal miner Emmanuel Siyabonga slumps against a wall while suffering from fatigue and a severe headache after hauling a sack of illegally mined coal out of the abandoned Golfview coal mine in Ermelo, South Africa.

South Africa is among the world's top producers of coal, most of it coming from Mpumalanga, where open pit coal mines and aging power stations dot the landscape. Nearly a century and a half of intensive, industrial coal mining here has produced considerable wealth for a few, while leaving a legacy of severe pollution and environmental damage. Yet local communities remain among the most marginalized in the country, with tens of thousands living in tin shacks in sprawling townships lacking even the most basic amenities.

Siyabonga is one of thousands forced by poverty and a lack of jobs into the brutal world of illegal coal mining. Known locally as zama zamas, an isiZulu phrase that translates loosely as "those who take a chance," they use little more than pickaxes and their bare hands, undertaking extreme hardships and considerable risk to salvage what mining companies have left behind.

To local households, many of whom rely on coal for cooking and heating their homes, Siyabonga and others like him provide an essential service. Yet in the eyes of the government, they are criminals and a danger to society. To operate legally, they would need permits, yet under South Africa's current mining system, it is virtually impossible for them to obtain them.

"People are just trying to find a life here," said Siyabonga, whose meager earnings help support his two children, ages 2 and 6. "There's no work. We're sitting at home with no money in our pockets."

The abandonment of a mine

The Golfview Mine, where Siyabonga is working, is one of several abandoned mines dotted around the town of Ermelo in the heart of South Africa's coal belt. It was once operated by Golfview Mining Ltd, a subsidiary of Anker Coal and Mineral Holdings South Africa (Pty) Ltd, itself part of the Netherlands-based Anker group. Struggling financially, Golfview Mining halted operations in 2014, and went into business rescue the following year, after being acquired as part of a package by the Namane Group, a South African conglomerate. The site hasn't been commercially mined since. (Business rescue in South Africa is legal process that sets up external supervision for a company in dire straits in an effort to restore financial stability.)

An illicit coal miner, known locally as a zama zama, walks through a landscape scarred by large-scale mining at the abandoned Golfview mine. Mining companies are required by law to rehabilitate their land after ceasing operations yet in practice this rarely happens. A representative of Golfview Mining told NPR that, while the site has not been mined in over a decade, it could be mined again in the future and was therefore not considered technically closed.

Neither has it been cleaned up. Today Golfview remains heavily polluted and scarred with mining pits and waste heaps. Old mine buildings and rusting machinery slowly decay, some of them now submerged in floodwaters. Zama zamas say that sections of the mine underground have been burning unchecked for over a decade.

Fires, tunnel collapses, undetected gas

The subterranean fires are just one of the obstacles facing Siyabonga and his colleagues. Tunnel collapses are a constant risk. So too are the effects of long-term exposure to coal dust. But his greatest worry, he said, is the gas that drifts undetected through the old tunnels.

"You don't see it but you feel it coming into your brain," he said. "You feel your mind becoming dizzy. You hear a ringing in your ears, then you need to get out. If you stay, it's over."

Artisanal miners inspect a crack in the ceiling of a recently dug tunnel at Ding Dong mine outside Ermelo, South Africa. Such mines can be hazardous places to work, yet for many, amid widespread unemployment, they remain one of the only viable ways of supporting their families.

A month earlier, four of his colleagues had been carried out unconscious by fellow miners after being overcome by gas. Cellphone video footage seen by NPR shows a group of miners frantically slapping and pouring water over their limp bodies in an effort to revive them. The men recovered in the hospital. Others have been less fortunate.

South Africa requires mining companies to rehabilitate their land after wrapping up operations, but the legislation is rarely enforced, and several loopholes exist to avoid the responsibility. In 2017, the mining ministry reported that out of nearly 6,000 abandoned or ownerless mines across the country, less than 1% had been properly rehabilitated. Many of these have since become magnets for illegal mining. At Golfview, limited rehabilitation work was started but never completed.

A Golfview representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the work had not been done because, even though the company had not mined there in a decade, the site could be mined again in the future and was therefore not technically considered closed. He also said that the company had tried and failed to stop illegal mining.

"The company has done everything it possibly can to secure the site," he told NPR over the phone, adding that two of its security contractors had been killed by illegal miners there. "SAPS [The South African Police Service] don't want to help us, the DMRE [Department of Mineral Resources and Energy] doesn't want to help us. Nobody wants to touch it."

Ivy Mkhuma, 39, displays a photo of her late husband at her home on the edge of a coal mine in the township of Vosman in eMalahleni, South Africa. Mkhuna believes air pollution from the mine contributed to the death of her husband, who was asthmatic. Since she moved to the area, the mines have encroached ever closer toward the edge of the settlement.

Brigadier Donald Mdluli, a spokesman for the SAPS, said the police do periodically conduct raids at Golfview, but that they are not able to permanently guard a privately owned mine. The DMRE did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.

In the past, there were sometimes hundreds of artisanal miners — the term used for those working on a small scale and with limited tools — operating at Golfview. But since the gas became more prevalent around the end of 2024, for reasons not fully understood, most left for other mines. During NPR's visit, Siyabonga was one of just five men working on the site. They worked in pairs, one hacking at the walls while the other rested. The men were so fatigued that each could only manage a few swings of the pick before switching places. Hauling the load back to the surface took all their remaining strength.

"It's not easy working here with the gas," said Nzunzo Xhulu, a colleague of Siyabonga's, after hauling up another sack of coal. "But there's no work, no money. We're hustling here."

Artisanal miner Nzunzo Xhulu hauls a sack of coal up a flight of steps at the abandoned Golfview coal mine in Ermelo, South Africa.

From time to time, cars pulled in to buy coal. Despite Mpumalanga being home to 11 coal-fired power stations, many residents still lack access to electricity and remain heavily reliant on coal, especially during the winter as a crucial source of heating. Almost all of the large-scale mines in the area sell their coal to the power stations or export it overseas, leaving artisanal miners like Siyabonga and Xhulu as the main source for hundreds of thousands of households across the country.

"The community completely relies on us," said Jabulani Sibiya, the head of the artisanal miners association in Ermelo. "We sell to everyone. We sell directly to the schools, even to some police officers."

Sibiya was speaking from outside the entrance of "Ding Dong" mine, another illicit operation on the other side of town. As he talked, bare-chested miners heaved wheelbarrows full of coal up a steep path toward a waiting truck. Barely a hundred yards away at the foot of the hill, a pair of middle-aged white golfers clad in shorts and polo shirts wheeled their golf bags along a pristine fairway at the Ermelo Country Club.

Jabulani Vela Sibiya, chairman of the Ermelo Community Artisanal Miners Association, photographed at an illicit coal storage site in the township of Wesselton in Ermelo, South Africa.

"The mining companies have done nothing for the community," said Sibiya, who also runs an illicit coal yard outside the tin shack where he lives with his wife and children in a nearby township. "The land is destroyed. There's nothing else we can do here. The government sees us as criminals and gangsters. But these guys are just trying to survive and feed their families."

While the miners at Ding Dong live in fear of raids by the national police, they also say they face daily extortion from the local police.

"They don't want to lock us up, they just want money," said Sibiya. "And they take it by force. We get no peace."

Brigadier Mdluli said the service does not "promote corruption" and that if reported formally, action would be taken.

Does mining truly benefit local communities?

Since the first South African diamond was discovered in 1867, mining has played an outsized role in shaping the country and its uniquely unequal society. It not only underwrote colonial expansion across Southern Africa, said Robert Krause, head of the Environmental Justice Programme at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand, it also provided a key motivation for the large scale appropriation of land and the mass exploitation of Black labor, which in turn helped pave the way for apartheid. For over a century and a half, vast wealth was extracted. Very little trickled down to ordinary people.

30-year-old artisanal miner David Vilakazi fills a wheelbarrow with illegally mined coal in an informal mine near Ermelo, South Africa. The activity is considered illegal by police because the miners do not have a license, yet the town depends on their coal, and the economy surrounding it.

After apartheid, new laws were drafted that aimed to make the industry more accessible to Black South Africans. The state took ownership of all mineral resources, issuing mining rights to applicants who wished to mine. Yet the conditions of obtaining a license or permit were so onerous and expensive that they largely remained accessible only to companies or the extremely wealthy. Requirements for mining companies to invest in local communities were left vague. And artisanal mining was omitted from the legislation.

"Both the conduct of mining companies and the state's failure to regulate have created this situation," said Krause. "Over 30 years after the advent of democracy, the economic benefits of mining are still felt the least by the communities that are most impacted, who live closest to mines. South Africa has an immense unemployment crisis, but often the figures are even higher among mining communities than they are nationally, which says a lot."

An aerial view of the village of Duvha, which lies next to a coal mine and the coal fired Duvha power station, in Mpumalanga province, South Africa. Mpumalanga, the heartland of the country's coal industry, has some of the worst rates of air pollution in the world according to a 2018 analysis of satellite data.

In May 2025, the government released a draft bill to amend current mining laws, offering the prospect of a possible future formalization of artisanal mining. Yet legal experts say the bill could end up doing more harm than good. For one thing, its definition of artisanal mining is extremely narrow, applying only to those using the most rudimentary tools and working on the surface, immediately ruling out miners like Siyabonga and Xhulu who work underground. Artisanal miners say the proposed size of the areas designated for artisanal mining, at less than four square acres, is too small, and that the permit system would not cater to mining cooperatives, only to individuals.

But most concerning, said Krause, is that for anyone unable to comply with the new regulations, the draft bill introduces penalties of up to a decade in jail for illegal mining and creates new offenses of "aiding and abetting illegal mining" and "transporting" illegally mined products. In a place like Ermelo, where coal is a cornerstone of the economy, this could criminalize entire communities.

"There's already a lot of victimization of environmental and artisanal mining activists," said Krause. "So this is only going to give more tools for arrests."

Artisanal miners at work inside the abandoned Golfview coal mine in Ermelo, South Africa. The work is gruelling and hazardous, particularly in recent months after sections of the mine became filled with poisonous gas. But amid widespread unemployment, many say this is the only way they can continue to feed their families.

Krause expressed concern that, without provisions for training or other support that would help artisanal miners comply with the new regulations, the bill could be used to, "justify an intensified militarized response."

In late 2023, the police launched a nationwide crackdown on illegal mining known as operation Vala Umgodi. They say the move has led to the arrest of more than 18,000 illegal miners. Yet Vala Umgodi's raids on mining sites across the country have been blamed for numerous deaths and the operation is currently under investigation by South Africa's Human Rights Commission. Much of the focus of the operation has been on the illegal mining of gold and diamonds, yet the coal belt has also been targeted.

A clash with police

On December 12 last year, T, an artisanal miner from Zimbabwe, said he was resting outside the entrance to Ding Dong mine when he saw a group of police approaching in golf buggies across the golf course. He turned and ran toward the mine, where he hoped he might evade arrest. Then he heard gunshots, and moments later, felt a burning pain in his leg. He'd been hit twice, once in the hip, another in the inner thigh. He made it into the mine, where he hid for the next four hours.

"I was bleeding and in pain," said T, who asked that only the initial of his first name be used, over fears of police retaliation. "I was scared, my heart was beating so fast."

After eventually leaving the mine once the coast seemed clear, T was too afraid of the police to seek help at a hospital. Instead he made his way home, where his wife washed and dressed his wounds as best she could. Only later did he learn another miner had been shot and killed during the raid.

"It was unbelievable, like a movie," said T, recalling his sense of shock that the authorities would use lethal force against the artisanal miners. "I was so confused. I didn't steal anything from anyone. To me it's not wrong."

In a statement, Mpumalanga Police claimed miners opened fire on them but numerous miners deny this. The Independent Police Investigative Directorate is currently investigating the incident.

Operation Vala Umgodi made international headlines in January when police cut off food supplies to hundreds of illegal miners trapped about a mile and a quarter underground in an abandoned gold mine near Johannesburg. The police said that the men could exit the mine via another shaft with a functioning lift. The miners insist the two shafts were not connected. Only after a court was shown video footage from inside the mine showing dozens of bodies and emaciated survivors did the government launch a rescue. During the siege, more than 90 men died.

In January, police cut off food and water supplies to hundreds of illegal miners trapped about a mile and a quarter underground in an abandoned gold mine near Johannesburg. Only after a court was shown video footage from inside the mine showing dozens of bodies and emaciated survivors did the government launch a rescue. Above: A police officer standing guard outside the mine..

Nobody has taken accountability, and the mass deaths have largely been blamed on the miners themselves, whom government officials have repeatedly characterized as dangerous criminals. Asked during the siege whether the government would send food to the trapped miners, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni replied, "Criminals are not to be helped. Criminals are to be persecuted."

Back in Ermelo, Jabulani Sibiya believes it is impossible for the government to effectively police illegal mining in the long term. There are now more than 6,000 abandoned and ownerless mines across the country, huge mineral wealth still in the ground, and a massive population of unemployed and disenfranchised young men who will go to extreme lengths to support their families. And with the country currently attempting to transition from coal to greener energy, a process that the government acknowledges will result in hundreds of thousands of job losses, the numbers of people looking to mine artisanally are only likely to grow.

"You can't fight the people," said Sibiya, who believes formalization of artisanal mining is the only solution. "Two weeks after a mine closes, we plan on our Whatsapp group to go back in. People will always find a way."

A fatal job

The day after NPR's visit to Golfview mine, a customer arrived and requested a ton of coal, an unusually large order. Emmanuel Siyabonga had taken a day off to hand out resumes in town in yet another attempt to find less dangerous work. But his friend Nzunzo Xhulu, along with another colleague, agreed to take on the job.

Artisanal coal miners including Nzunzo Xhulu (l) prepare to deliver a wheelbarrowful of coal to a waiting buyer at the abandoned Golfview mine in Ermelo, South Africa. Much of the local community relies on the coal produced by illegal mining at sites like this one. Nzunzo Xhulu died in the mine, most likely from gas exposure, two days after this photo was taken.

The following morning, the police discovered their lifeless bodies lying at the top of the steps. Sibiya said the men had been killed by gas underground, their bodies carried out of the mine by colleagues and left for the police to find.

"It pained me so much," said Sibiya, who blames both the government and the mining companies for the men's deaths. If more of the benefits of large-scale mining were reaching the community, he argues, men like Xhulu wouldn't feel compelled to do this work. And if the government were to properly formalize and regulate artisanal mining, he says, the miners wouldn't end up operating in the shadows without safety equipment or support.

"The government has failed us," said Sibiya. "But I believe there must be a way for us to share in the mineral wealth. I don't want my kids to end up like me."

Jabulani Vela Sibiya, chairman of the Ermelo Community Artisanal Miners Association kisses his daughter outside his home in the coal mining town of Ermelo, South Africa.

Tommy Trenchard is an independent photojournalist based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has previously contributed photos and stories to NPR on the Mozambique cyclone of 2019, Indonesian death rituals and illegal miners in abandoned South African diamond mines and won a World Press Photo prize for the images in his story for NPR on clashes between elephants and people in Zambia.