Lethal fumes that left 17 people, including children, dead at the Angelo informal settlement in Boksburg last week have put the spotlight again on unregulated, informal and small-scale mining in South Africa.
Dubbed zama zamas and widely condemned as “illegal” and “criminal” by the state and mining capital, this economic activity has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, such as the rape of eight women allegedly by illegal miners in Krugersdorp and the recent deaths of 31