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."
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.)
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."
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."
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."
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.
"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.
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."
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."
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.
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.
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."
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.
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