New Jersey Devils prospects shine at World Junior Summer Showcase
Aug 18, 2023Guilty Gear Strive: The Board Game Kickstarter Begins in August
Aug 10, 2023Breaking: Elon Musk's X To Launch Trading App, Dogecoin To Play A Part?
Aug 14, 202315 Best Walmart Rugs and Runners of 2023
Aug 08, 2023Best Bedroom Rugs 2023
Jul 29, 2023Chrome Ore Mining for Stainless Steel Tarnishes South Africa’s Platinum Belt
An illegal-mine owner near one of his sites in Witrandjie.
Areas with massive chrome ore deposits have become scarred, dystopian free-for-alls.
Twenty-five years ago, to get to school in the morning, Godfrey Molwana would walk 2 miles from his home in Witrandjie, a small village in South Africa. His route passed through communal grazing lands for cattle and goats—a rolling expanse of acacia trees and hardy shrubs, interspersed with the corn plots of subsistence farmers. Some families had graves on the land. “This area was for everyone,” Molwana recalled.
Close to the village lay the remains of a chrome mine, with derelict buildings and dumps of discarded ore where children from the community would play. Chrome is essential for manufacturing stainless steel. South Africa has the largest deposits in the world, but this mine, no longer profitable, had been shuttered for decades. Some older men in the community had worked there as laborers, earning the low wages designated for Black people during apartheid. The ground beneath the village was rich, but its residents had remained in poverty, even after White rule ended in 1994.