South Africa, the world’s top gold producer, has launched a crackdown against “pirates” who live for months in the bowels of abandoned pits, plundering booty worth millions of dollars.

Known as the “Zama Zama”, which means “Let’s try our luck” in the local Zulu language, the so-called “gold pirates” have struck terror among local miners as well as police by setting up booby traps and homemade bombs to keep them away.

South African police have meanwhile turned up the heat, staging several operations to ferret out the bandits — some of whom have lived up to two years underground, braving the searing heat and poisonous fumes to seek instant riches.

Some appear unrepentant, such as 26-year-old Samuel — who did not want his full name used — who watched on as police raided what they described as the world’s largest illegal gold smelting house in the mining town of Welkom, south of Johannesburg.

“Gold is the only way to survive in this country,” he said. “I’m a mobster.

“You have to go down and get it yourself,” said Samuel, who once spent four straight months underground, thereby earning 80,000 rand (11,300 dollars/8,500 euros).

“It’s like being in jail, there is no water and you can’t get food easily. You have to sleep on rocks, its really hot,” he told AFP.

The raided facility, known as the G-Hostel, provides an intricate link in the gold smuggling process between the illegal miners who bring up gold-bearing rock and syndicates who then buy nuggets for about 100 rand a gram.

Once underground, the pirates buy food from legitimate miners, paying exorbitant sums. A loaf of bread costs about 20 rand — four times its market price — and a chicken’s price at 120 rand is also just as expensive.

Samuel emerged from the mine richer by 65,000 rand after paying his “connections” — corrupt policemen and security guards who help the smugglers to get down the shafts.

Mike Fryer, a police official in charge of an underground bust which netted 60 pirates, said his men faced an uphill task while staging raids.

“Its not natural light, it is very warm and the humidity is very high. There are dangerous gases and the places they work in are very dangerous for rockfalls,” he told AFP.

The illicit miners also face peril and some perish. Fryer said in case of death, the pirates leave the corpse in a shaft lift used by legitimate miners, with a note containing his family’s contacts.

There have been reports that some of the pirates have girlfriends or comfort women sent down to them but Samuel dismissed this, saying: “It’s too hot down there for that.”

Police captain Neels van der Merwe, who heads up a unit looking into the theft of precious metals, said corruption was a major problem.

The G-Hostel is insalubrious with shards of glass and rubbish littered around small streams set up to wash the gold. There are holes in the ground left behind by pestles used to break down gold bearing rock.

The smugglers then use an adapted gas bottle called ‘penduka’ to spin the crushed rock with iron balls and mercury and grind it down into gold dust.

The past two police raids at G-Hostel have yielded over five tons of gold dust, which smugglers wash with water and mercury to form a silver amalgam. This, when burned with a cutting torch, forms gold nuggets. Many suffer from mercury poison as the toxic substance seeps through the skin to attack the brain and kidneys.

South Africa is still the world’s largest gold producer although dwindling output and a strengthening rand are weakening the industry, along with more than two billion rand lost every year through gold theft.

Part of South Africa’s high crime levels, including gold smuggling, lie in the fact that nearly one third of the country’s active workforce is unemployed.

“It’s a crime world,” says Van der Merwe, pointing to the scores of barefoot children running around the G-Hostel, who he says will probably grow up to become gold pirates.

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