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
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