The City Gold Built Is Being Hollowed Out From Below

Johannesburg was born from a gold rush in 1886 and grew into the richest city in Africa on the strength of what lay beneath it.

Nearly a century and a half later, that same underground geology has become the city's most dangerous liability.

Across Gauteng and the wider gold reef, illegal miners known as zama zamas, Zulu for " those who try" are descending into abandoned shafts by the thousand, and the infrastructure above them is starting to give way.