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South Africa's informal miners fight for their future in coal's twilight

Artisanal miners look on at others filling up a wheelbarrow of coal in a tunnel at the Golfview informal coal mine in Ermelo on September 25, 2025. [AFP]

Growing up, Cyprial dreamed of being a lawyer. Instead, he now spends his days underground, swinging a pickaxe against rock in a pitch-black illegal mine that snakes for kilometres beneath South Africa’s coal heartland.

The rumbling of wheelbarrows echoed down the narrow tunnels where he and dozens of other men had been mining since dawn.

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