Shell offered South African villagers jobs. They chose their heritage instead.

Mashona Dlamini knew his land was rich long before any mining company told him so.  

As a child, he often followed his father, a healer called an inyanga, down through the silver-flecked red dunes around their village to the coast. There, they gathered the octopuses, sea urchins, and seawater that his father used to make medicine. In winter, the land on either side of their path heaved up sweet potatoes and corn, in summer thick bunches of bananas. As long as they took only what they needed, Mr. Dlamini’s father explained as they walked, there would always be more.

So when international mining companies began to arrive in the early 2000s – first for