News Summary

• On August 13, a wall of soil collapsed and killed 14 miners, most of whom were believed to be undocumented migrants.
• The disaster has exposed a darker side of South Africa’s chrome wealth: an underground economy where vulnerable migrants, unemployed former mineworker and criminal groups converge around a lucrative mineral trade.
• “It happened in a flash, and the earth swallowed a dozen,” Lerothodi Nale*, a migrant from Lesotho who escaped the collapse and ran to alert nearby security guards, told Al Jazeera.