Illustration: Isabella Cotier for Bloomberg
The Deadly Scrabble for Gold in Johannesburg’s Abandoned Mines
The soaring price of gold is fueling illegal mining that’s shredding parts of the landscape close to South Africa’s biggest city.
In a muddy pond surrounded by overgrown scrub, four men are pouring sludge onto a towel, hoping that a few grains of gold will stick.
The pond is a relic of a garden swimming pool close to the now-abandoned Durban Deep mine, a place where, over 102 years, gold worth more than $155 billion at today’s record prices was extracted. The mine opened in 1898 and was shuttered in 2000 as gold hovered just above $250 an ounce, a record low. That price is now more than $4,000.