Violence and intimidation have caused Thompson Ngobeni from Mozambique and Abednico Mkhize from KwaZulu-Natal to say they will not go underground again. The pair, both 25, were digging for gold in waste material from a mine dump near Brakpan when interviewed.
"It’s not safe, people are killing each other and robbing each other," Mr Ngobeni says.
While the gold content of the waste rock is less than a third of what they could mine underground, it is much safer to work on the surface, Mr Mkhize says.
Once the rock is ground into a fine powder, the men pour it into a sieve and add water, making a paste that they then drip onto a towel placed on a plank of wood. They scrape the slush into a bowl and add mercury.
Gold particles cling to the mercury and the men take the substance and put it in a cloth. They squeeze the cloth to extract the mercury and form a small ball of gold concentrate.
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