JOHANNESBURG – Dozens of fortune-seekers have descended on the township of Springs, about 50km east of Johannesburg, scouring the dirt for gold in scenes reminiscent of the rush that built South Africa’s financial capital at the turn of the 20th century.
A cattle kraal ringed with barbed wire has become the centre of the country’s latest gold fever, with diggers armed with pickaxes arriving almost overnight.
“They spread like a virus,” said security guard Princess Thoko Mlangeni (33) outside her tin-shack home overlooking the field, recalling how they first appeared on 8 February.
The sudden invasion of Springs, birthplace of 1991 Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer, reflects a wider frenzy as gold prices have surged past R80 000 an ounce this year, more than double their January level.
According to Mlangeni’s brother Nicholas, the scramble began when someone digging a fence-post hole noticed the soil’s unusual colour and tested it in water. Word spread on social media, and within days the field was crowded with prospectors.
Most are not chasing riches but survival in a country where unemployment stands near 32%, according to government figures.
Mlangeni tried her luck too. “I only found a tiny little bit,” she said, showing a fraction of her little fingernail. With a 12-hour night shift ahead, the work was more trouble than it was worth for the mother of two.
Survival, not riches
Others persist. Between drags on a cigarette, Siyabonga Sidontsa (47) stuffed soil into empty maize-meal sacks.
“I came on Tuesday. I live a 30-minute walk away, and I take the sacks back with that,” he said, pointing to the wheelbarrow he acquired for the purpose.
Processing 10 sacks of soil each day, he said that in five days he had earned R450, more than he makes in a typical week since losing his gardening job five years ago.
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“I got very little but I can buy food with that,” said the father of three.
Some crews work at a larger scale, loading small tipper trucks. Men dig in flip-flops through dense black earth. Women carry the loads to the vehicles, one weaving between the craters under the watchful eyes of cows displaced from their enclosure, balancing a bag of freshly dug soil on her head.
For Sidontsa, the answer is simple: they should open a proper mine here “so that we can work”.
South Africa saw a similar rush in 2021 when crystal-like stones found in KwaZulu-Natal province sparked a diamond rush, only for experts to confirm they were merely quartz.
The country has a network of illegal artisanal miners known as zama-zamas who occupy abandoned mines and are linked to criminal activity in surrounding areas. Many operate as organised syndicates using modern mining equipment, often with violent clashes between rival groups and with police resulting in multiple deaths.
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