Emmanuel Siyabonga lost formal employment and now works in illegal coal mining in Mpumalanga, hauling heavy sacks from gas-contaminated shafts under hazardous conditions. He suffers pain, breathing difficulties, and a sense of being worn down by the work. Mpumalanga produces much of South Africa's coal, generating wealth for a few while leaving pollution, environmental damage, and marginalized communities with inadequate amenities. Tens of thousands live in tin shacks and face chronic unemployment, pushing many into zama zamas informal mining using rudimentary tools to salvage leftover coal that many households rely on for cooking and heating.
When Emmanuel Siyabonga was a boy, he wasn't fussy about the type of job he wanted when he grew up. Other boys dreamed of being footballers, doctors, soldiers. All Siyabonga wanted, he says, was a job that made him happy. He was born in 1994, the year Nelson Mandela came to power in South Africa ending centuries of exploitative white rule and ushering in a new era of hope for Black South Africans.
On an overcast day in March, he lay slumped in the dirt outside a derelict coal mine in the eastern province of Mpumalanga. His eyes were clenched shut, and his head throbbed in pain as he struggled to catch his breath. He'd just hauled a 110-pound sack of coal up 84 steep concrete steps to the surface from a mineshaft contaminated with toxic gas. The job does not make him happy.
Siyabonga is one of thousands forced by poverty and a lack of jobs into the brutal world of illegal coal mining. Known locally as zama zamas, an isiZulu phrase that translates loosely as "those who take a chance," they use little more than pickaxes and their bare hands, undertaking extreme hardships and considerable risk to salvage what mining companies have left behind.
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