Unemployment prompts Mpumalanga villagers to turn their backyards into crystal mines
Boekenhouthoek village Residents told Eyewitness News that they make thousands of rands from selling the gems to both local and international customers.
A Boekenhouthoek village resident in Mpumalanga is inside a tunnel mining quartz crystal. Picture: Jacques Nelles/Eyewitness News
MPUMALANGA - As South Africa draws closer to its national and provincial elections, Eyewitness News is on the ground engaging communities about life 30 years since the dawn democracy.
In Mpumalanga, deprived families from the Boekenhouthoek village – an area on the outskirts of Moloto Road, which connects Pretoria and Mpumalanga – have turned their homes into crystal mines.
Several households have dug underground tunnels in their gardens to extract quartz crystals – which are uniquely South African.
They are used to make jewellery, glass and GPS devices.
Residents told Eyewitness News that they make thousands of rands from selling the gems to both local and international customers.
In the poverty- stricken village where unemployment is rife, even the educated are armed with picks and shovels to make ends meet.
Driving around the village, Eyewitness News is welcomed into one of the homes where boxes of beer are filled with the shiny, colourful and valuable spirit quartz crystals.
Boekenhouthoek village residents in Mpumalanga inside a tunnel mining quartz crystals. Picture: Jacques Nelles/Eyewitness News
A resident – who obtained a business management diploma at the Tshwane TVET College in 2018 – crawls into a tunnel and explains that this is his bread and butter.
“After I graduated, I stayed home because I was jobless. I realised that my only solution would finding something to do while I job hunt. That’s when I started digging in the backyard and making ends meet by selling these crystals.”
A few moments later, a 23-year-old resident crawls out of another narrow tunnel with his face and clothes coated in sand.
But he says finding formal employment is not foremost as he boasts about the thousands of rands he makes weekly.
“Many people have never seen or held R30,000 in cash but I have. I know I look dirty, but I sleep well at night knowing I’m providing for my family. Just so you know, I dropped out of school in grade 5, but today I have something because of my hands.”
He refuses to be labelled a zama zama or illegal miner.
“It really hurts that some see me as an illegal miner or even a fool. The money I make from this supports many families.”
He proudly tells Eyewitness News that he’s managed to extend his family home, thanks to proceeds made from selling the crystal.
Meanwhile, most backyard miners say their biggest customers are based in Johannesburg.
