A mile underground, gold smugglers with home-made bombs battle police

Police in South Africa have launched a series of daring operations to combat bands of gold smugglers who operate more than a mile underground in mineshafts using homemade bombs to fend off arrest.

The smugglers, called the "Zama Zama" boys, face suffocation and even madness in their pursuit of wealth in an illegal trade that is estimated to be worth $700m (£371m) a year.

The smugglers haunt abandoned mine workings, remaining underground for as much as a year at a time, according to the police. The bombs used are crudely constructed using commercial explosives rammed into bottles. Bits of scrap iron are added for shrapnel. Sometimes they are strung up as booby traps.

The news of the Zama Zama - which translates loosely as "let's try our luck" - emerged this week after 60 men appeared in court on charges of breaching mining regulations and illegal possession of explosives.

The smugglers had been rounded up by police in six operations conducted in the goldfields of the Free State and Gauteng.

Assistant police commissioner Mike Fryer said the police operation opened a fresh front in South Africa's war against gold smuggling.

"Our biggest problem is that they were utilising explosives and handmade grenades to threaten the people underground," he said. "If one of those goes off in the wrong place, the whole thing could come tumbling down."

The illicit goldminers carry pistols and some have been seen with AK47 assault rifles. AK47s are available on South Africa's black market for less than £100. The men sleep on planks and live in horrendous conditions.

Superintendent Joe Meiring, an explosives expert who took part in the operations, said: "There is no fresh air. It can be as hot as 38C, everything is very compressed and the humidity is extremely high. They work there, they sleep there and they eat there. It is hot and dark and they age very quickly."

Supt Meiring said they chisel out the ore and then process it with grinders and mercury. This is also dangerous because mercury is toxic and can be absorbed through the skin, attacking the kidneys and brain. The term "mad as a hatter" came from the use of mercury in the hat industry.

The illegal miners are kept supplied with provisions, including food and mail, by regular miners. Police claim they even have their grilfriends living underground with them.

Police recounted one occasion when a smuggler died underground and his corpse was left by his colleagues next to a hoist for removal and burial.

There are three big international syndicates that buy the smuggled gold, according to the Johannesburg Star, which broke the story. It said more than 20 police officers took part in the Zama Zama roundup. They had undergone training sessions beforehand.

"It's very dangerous," Mr Fryer told the paper. "We bought the officers some new equipment because they can't use guns down there. Bullets could spark gas explosions." He declined to describe the new equipment.

"They actually threw one of their handmade grenades at security [personnel], but nobody was hurt. They were lucky because it was a relatively stable environment ... further down the shaft it would have been horrific."

In a raid in August, 18 of the smugglers were arrested, 23 home-made bombs confiscated and 400kg (880lbs) of gold-bearing material seized. No police officers have been killed or injured in the operation to date.

In South Africa, where unemployment runs at more than 40% and social welfare benefits are low, it is not unusual for people to go to exceptional lengths to try to make a living.

The stark gap in income was recently seen in the sale by the Oppenheimer family of a 1.13% stake in mining giant Anglo American to China for $800m. That still leaves them with a 2.29% stake in the corporation among other holdings, including 40% in De Beers.

There are, however, indications that the tide is turning with the arrival, at the top of the corporate tree of people like South Africa's former mineworkers' leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, now a multimillionaire businessman.

Mr Ramaphosa's father was a miner whose home was in Venda, on South Africa's northern borders. He used to walk to work, taking six months: three months to work and three months back home.

Illegal mining is big business in South Africa, where the Institute of Security Studies estimated in 2001 that mining companies lost as much as 356 tonnes of gold a year to the pirates - equivalent to about a 10th of total gold production.

The mines

· Temperatures range from 30C (86F) to as much as 50C, but with cooling systems they can be maintained at around 28C. With each drop of 100 metres (320 feet) underground, the temperature increases by one degree

· At least half a million South Africans, including dependents and suppliers, rely on the industry

· In the Harmony mine, one of the largest ice-making machines in the world (which has a capacity that is more than 3m times that of a domestic refrigerator) makes 20,000 tonnes of ice a day, which is crushed and pumped along pipes that run down through the mine galleries: the warmed water is pumped back to the surface

· South Africa produces 12% of the world's gold

· The country's deepest operating mine, an AngloGold Ashanti mine called TauTona in Carltonville, is about 2 miles deep

· For every 1.8 tonnes of gold mined in South Africa one person dies and 11 are seriously injured