Rustenburg, South Africa – On August 13, a wall of soil collapsed and killed 14 miners, most of whom were believed to be undocumented migrants, at a disused mining site near Nkaneng, an informal settlement outside Rustenburg in South Africa’s mineral-rich North West province. Without a passport, Nale left the scene afterwards, fearing arrest. More miners could still be trapped underground, North West police commissioner Lieutenant-General Arthur Adams told journalists, including Al Jazeera.
The disaster has exposed a darker side of South Africa’s chrome wealth: an underground economy where vulnerable migrants, unemployed former mineworker and criminal groups converge around a lucrative mineral trade. Rustenburg sits above the Bushveld Igneous Complex, one of the world’s richest geological formations, containing vast deposits of platinum-group metals and chrome. The region’s minerals have long powered industries including stainless steel production and advanced industrial applications.
South Africa is the world’s largest chrome producer and exporter, with much of its ore feeding global supply chains, particularly China’s stainless steel industry. But alongside the formal mining sector, illegal extraction has expanded in parts of the country, including North West province, where authorities have raised concerns about unauthorised mining operations, environmental destruction and criminal groups exploiting abandoned and inactive mine sites. For migrants like Nale, these abandoned pits offer both opportunity and danger.
South Africa’s government has announced programmes to rehabilitate abandoned mines and close dangerous shafts, but critics say the scale of the response remains far below the challenge facing the country. Thousands of abandoned mine shafts remain across South Africa, creating opportunities for illegal operators and exposing workers to deadly conditions. Chrome is attractive to illegal operators because deposits can often be reached closer to the surface, lowering extraction costs compared with deeper underground mining.
The result is an economy where profits are concentrated among those controlling equipment, transport routes and access to buyers, while miners take the greatest risks. Nale describes a system that begins far beyond South Africa’s borders. Undocumented migrants from Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, alongside unemployed South Africans including former mineworker, are recruited by intermediaries who provide transport money and promise work around Rustenburg’s chrome fields.
On arrival, Nale said, workers are divided into groups controlled by criminal networks that provide food, mining equipment and, he alleges, explosives before sending them underground. Nale alleges that miners can be transferred between groups and forced to continue working underground until additional ore is extracted. The existence and scale of individual criminal groups involved in illegal mining are difficult to independently verify, but South African authorities have repeatedly linked illegal mining to organised crime, including violence, weapons trafficking and illicit financial networks.
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