A group of women in Burgersfort in the Sekhukhune District Municipality in Limpopo survive through illegal chrome mining near the local mines.
Many of the mines in the area have closed, resulting in job losses.
The women, who looked tired and hungry from the scorching sun, talk of their hardships.
They use picks and shovels and sell the chrome on the black market.
Fending for their families
A 56-year-old woman used to work as a general worker at the local mine for 21 years.
She was retrenched five years ago and says she now survives through mining chrome illegally.
“I come here at six ‘o clock in the morning to come here in search of the minerals. I dig until five late in the afternoon. This is a tough job, but I don’t have a choice. This is due to hunger. I don’t have a husband to help to fend for my family. I worked at Dilokong mine for 21 years until they shut down operations and I was retrenched. I then went to apply for another job at Smelter’s section. I was not selected due to lack of matric certificate.”
A 61-year-old woman says she has grandchildren that she supports financially. She wakes up early in the morning to go and dig for chrome in the bush at Maroega village.
She says she has learnt over time to determine if the stones she is digging have the mineral she is looking for.
Some women from Maroega village, a few metres from the new Tubatse Alloy Chrome mine, say they got into illegal mining because they are unemployed.
“They pay us R50 per wheelbarrow. It’s better than starving. We come here daily and dig and go home during sunset. We often come here with the hope of making few cents in order to buy food for the kids. It’s tough because sometimes we get the right stones and sometimes we don’t. We are breadwinners at home and some mines have shut down operations. We don’t always get the precious stones.”
Hiding from the police
Another woman says they always hide from police and officials from the Department of Energy and Mineral Resources as they are mining illegally.
“As you can see it’s late in the afternoon and we are hungry. They don’t want us to do this, but we just use our stubbornness and continue digging otherwise we will starve, they say we are illegal. The mines have closed, and we are not working so we don’t have any choice. We sometimes tell the police to leave us alone.”
Illegal mining is dangerous and sometimes the women suffer injuries. A woman died in 2019 when rocks collapsed on her while she was digging for chrome.
The identities of the women interviewed in this report are known to the SABC.
