Broke & Broken The Shameful Legacy of Gold Mining in South Africa

In 1889 a gold rush broke out on the Witwatersrand, changing South Africa’s history forever. More than 130 years later the mining industry is still one of the biggest drivers of the economy, but at the expense of those who work underground. Broke & Broken is the story of the thousands of men from South Africa and beyond its borders who paid with their lives for generations. These are men who left their homes as healthy, ambitious youngsters and returned broke, broken and bitter; victims of the shameful legacy of gold mining. The book seeks to say the names of the mineworkers who have built this country’s economy, because their own stories and their own spirits need to be magnified. The precious stone they spent most of their lives digging brought no shine to their lives – only pain, tears and death.

Lucas Ledwaba is a Johannesburg-based journalist and author. He is the co-author of We Are Going to Kill Each Other Today: The Marikana Story (Tafelberg 2013). He is a two-time winner of the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Award for feature writing. He has also won the Standard Bank Sikuvile Award for Feature Writing and the Vodacom Journalism Award for Feature Writing. Leon Sadiki is an award-winning photojournalist. His work on Marikana won him the Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Award Story of the Year 2013 and CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Award in the same year. His striking images of the Marikana massacre were published in We Are Going to Kill Each Other Today: The Marikana Story.