A group of Galamseyer, illegal gold miners, work in Kibi area, southern Ghana.
Cristina Aldehuela/AFP via Getty Images
A community centred approach is key to making headway in the battle against illegal mining
A miner silhouetted as he works in the Stan Terg mine in northern Kosovo.
Armend Nimani/AFP via Getty Images
Our prospects of a better, fairer future are inextricably linked with the minerals and metals beneath our feet. Is it time to make peace with the industry that extracts them?
A masked herdsman in Lesotho.
Edwin Remsberg/The Image Bank via Getty Images
Lesotho’s famo music is known for the use of accordions - and gang violence. In Wayfarers’ Hymns, Zakes Mda explores this tradition.
A “creuseur,” or digger, descends into a tunnel at the mine in Kawama, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Companies can’t verify that their source didn’t involve artisanal mining. A discussion over responsible sourcing strategies and practices is needed.
Students from Wits University, in Johannesburg, during a protest for free education.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook
The South African oddity is that those who in other societies would be arguing against free passes for the affluent, argue for them.
PA Archive
National Archive files reveal how the PM offered preferential treatment to a breakaway union in a bid to weaken its rivals.
Can you hear me now?
David Goldman/AP
Mine communications are complex, slow and unreliable. The solution to keeping miners safe, and rescuing them when disaster strikes, might just be in their hands already.
Meshack Mavuso played the role of ‘The Man with the Green Blanket’ in ‘Marikana the Musical’
@marikanathemusical
Two musicals set in working class mining communities – one in the UK and the other in South Africa – have diametrically opposed messages: one of hope; the other, despair.
An x-ray image of a miner’s lungs.
Reuters/Damir Sagolj
For thousands of miners who have developed silicosis from years of work on South Africa’s gold mines, a landmark court case will change their lives.