Most of the zama zamas are poorly equipped, many without the slightest bit of training. Death waits around every corner.

That’s how an unknown number of unauthorized miners — believed to be in the hundreds — have been surviving for weeks, possibly months, over a mile deep underground in a disused mine shaft in the South ...

Nathan Birhanu is an intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. He is a graduate of Fordham University’s Graduate Program in International Political Economy & Development. In ...

Bongani Bingwa speaks with Walter Jerald (pseudonym), a former zama zama. Listen below. In the abandoned mine shafts, desperate people risk their lives in hopes of striking gold. The term 'zama zama' ...

All the illegal miners, many of whom had been held against their will in an old disused mineshaft near Sabie, South Mine, and forced to mine for gold, are out now, and the extraction operation has ...

An operation to rescue illegal gold miners who are stranded in deep underground shafts in South Africa’s North West province got under way on Monday, ending a months-long standoff over their fate.

MOKOPANE – The body of a Lesotho national, believed to be a Zama-zama, was successfully retrieved from a shallow grave at the Zwartkrans Mine near Makapan’s Valley in Mokopane. Police spokesperson ...

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The resurfacing of illegal mining in the Carletonville area on the West Rand has prompted a gold-mining company to write an urgent open letter to Gauteng's provincial ...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Sleeping next to decomposing corpses and surviving on a foul mixture of toothpaste mixed with toilet paper. That's how an unknown number of unauthorized miners — believed ...