South Africa's informal miners fight for their future in coal's twilight

Thousands of informal miners are working every day beneath South Africa’s coal heartland, swinging pickaxes against rock in pitch-black illegal coal mines.

South Africa is among the world's top producers of coal, which fires about 80% of the country’s electricity.

In the eastern Mpumalanga province, informal miners like Cyprial are the invisible hands of this industry, risking their lives to provide communities with power.

"You know when you’re getting in that the upper surface is a stone. Might it happen that it falls down, it can kill me. That's what you must face when you get inside," said Cyprial, who spoke under a pseudonym to avoid retaliation from authorities.

"Take all the fears, shove it away. I don’t know how but … we try."

'Artisanal' or 'illegal'?

The government calls Cyprial and others like him "illegal miners," but they prefer the term "artisanal mining." They argue that their work, though unauthorised, is essential to the local community.

"This coal, we transport it to communities so those people can use it to cook and to warm themselves," said Jabulani Sibiya, who chairs Ermelo’s artisanal miners' union.

The electricity produced in Mpumalanga is too expensive for many locals, he said.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called miners like these a "menace" to the country's economy and security, and authorities are trying to stamp out the activity.

Analysts estimate there were more than 40,000 illegal miners in South Africa in 2021, though most operated in abandoned gold shafts.

The formal coal sector, meanwhile, employs more than 100,000 people in direct and indirect jobs across the value chain, according to research from the University of Cape Town.

'Just transition'

Ranked among the 12 largest greenhouse gas emitters globally, the country became in 2021 the first in the world to sign a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) deal with wealthy nations, worth $8.5 billion, to move away from dirty-power generation.

In the city of Ermelo, locals fear that this government-led transition to green energy might leave them behind again.

"For us, ‘just transition’ means transitioning from large-scale, destructive extraction form of mining, into a sustainable, artisanal and small-scale mining sector," said Zethu Hlatshwayo, the spokesperson for the National Association of Artisanal Miners. He spoke while sitting in a vegetable garden that he cares for with a local environmental NGO.

Activist Philani Mngomezulu, working in the same garden, pitched in: "Just one community mine, in the entire history of mining in this town -- that's all we're fighting for!"

Ermelo's artisanal miners have applied for a collective mining permit, but the process is costly and slow.

The men said that mining would continue to exist even after the phaseout from coal, including for critical minerals needed for products from solar panels to electric cars.

But it was essential to "include sustainability, and artisanal and small-scale miners from the marginalised communities," Hlatshwayo said.

"It will not be a just transition if our people are left behind."