How illegal mining gangs in South Africa feeding China’s demand for stainless steel scar the land
- Chinese demand for chromium to make stainless steel is fuelling illicit mining in South Africa that scars the land and divides communities
Twenty-five years ago, to get to school in the morning, Godfrey Molwana would walk more than 3km from his home in Witrandjie, a small village in South Africa.
His route passed through communal grazing lands for cattle and goats – a rolling expanse of acacia trees and hardy shrubs, interspersed with the corn plots of subsistence farmers. Some families had graves on the land.
“This area was for everyone,” Molwana recalled.
Close to the village lay the remains of a chrome mine, with derelict buildings and dumps of discarded ore where children from the community would play. Chrome is essential for manufacturing stainless steel.
South Africa has the largest deposits in the world, but this mine, no longer profitable, had been closed for decades. Some older men in the community had worked there as labourers, earning the low wages designated for black people during the apartheid era.
The ground beneath the village was rich, but its residents had remained in poverty, even after white rule ended, in 1994.
