The miners had known hunger before, but never like this. Afterwards they would talk of cracked skin, sores that would not heal, an emptiness that stopped you from sleeping or ever being fully awake. George and Alfred called it “the grief of hunger”, a numbness that engulfed you from within. Once they didn’t eat for 18 days. Although what was a “day” anyway, when they had not seen sunlight for months?
Their job was to sit in one of the middle tiers of the 37-level Buffelsfontein gold mine, about a kilometre underground, collecting the food that was lowered through the concrete shaft on a rope, then sending it on to the levels below. In the good times, the miners could get almost anything they desired, albeit at inflated prices: maize porridge, pilchards, biltong, milk, biscuits, mayonnaise, Coca-Cola, beer, whisky, cigarettes, even buckets of chicken from the local KFC.
As well as food, the rope carried humans in and out. The elevator cage had stopped working when Buffels, as everyone called it, had closed down in 2013. So had the ventilation fans and cooling system. At the mine’s deepest point, 3km underground, the natural temperature of the rock was 58.6°C. Not for nothing were the men who dug illegally in the labyrinth of abandoned tunnels known as “zama-zamas”, the ones who “try their luck”. | | |
