All that glistens...

Wednesday 14th September

Central Business District, Johannesburg, Gauteng Province

All that glistens is not gold.  Surely the converse is also true: all that is gold does not glisten.

The grim statistics showing the deaths in Johannesburg's gold mines certainly do not glisten - over 80,000 caused by accidents, and this only about 5% of the total, the others caused by preventable disease.

As the metal cage descends into the darkness of the gold mine, our three bodies filling a space once packed with thirty men, it begins to become apparent what a hellish job this was.

Gold Reef City, Johannesburg

We are given a tour of a former mineshaft and descend just 75m below the surface.  This mine is over 3000m deep and gets so close to the earth's core that working conditions become unbearably hot.

First down the shaft would have been the geologists to identify the gold reef - it's not the part that looks gold (for that is fool's gold) but rather the part with black and white pebbles.  They would mark the seam with red paint, then thousands of men would descend to extract the rock and push it to the surface in rail carriages known as cocopans.  All that protected the miners rom the tonnes of rock above were a few poles of eucalyptus wood.

As we re-ascend to the surface to watch a demonstration of how the gold is extracted, melted and poured into bullion, it becomes clear why the colonialists created a system of cheap labour to do this rotten job for them.

Today, the mine and some of the preserved buildings surrounding it have been turned into a theme park, rather like a cross between Pilgrim's Rest and Disneyland.  No longer is it rock falls and gas explosions that make men scream, now it is a series of white-knuckle rides, including the "tower of terror" plunge down a mineshaft.

Gold is the reason Johannesburg exists (they call it Egoli - the City of Gold) but when one considers the role it played in paving the way to apartheid, one has to wonder if it was more of a curse than a blessing.